Like Slipping Undercover

Erotic Spy Fiction

edited by Bethany Zaiatz

>

Circlet Press, Inc.

Cambridge, MA

Like Slipping Undercover
Copyright © 2014 by Circlet Press, Inc.
Cover Art Copyright © 2014 by Darrinhenry | Dreamstime

Published by Circlet Press, Inc.
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4

Introduction by Bethany Zaiatz

7

Spook by A.C. Wise

16

Not Exactly Dead by Chris Amies

27

The Masterless Man by T.C. Mill

39

Sleeper Agent by A.J. Viggen

54

Jasmine Always Wins by Shawn Erin

71

Living On Schizo Time by Eric Del Carlo

85

Passing by Kaysee Renee Robichaud

100

Knife, Gun, High Explosive by Reina Delacroix

116

A Private Moment by Julian Oliver-Fenn

125

Giving Up The Spook by Max Erica Scott

165

Contributors

Contents

From the persistently popular fictional secret agent and womanizer,
James Bond, to the countless provocative depictions of real life
accused spy and exotic dancer, Mata Hari, sex and espionage have
always seemed like a natural fit in the public consciousness. It
might be blatant romanticism of a thankless, dangerous, and
uncomfortably necessary job, but it’s easy for those of us who will

never lead a double life to imagine all the myriad ways that

seduction and sex can be used by master spies. Like Slipping Undercover
features ten new, previously unpublished stories of erotic “spy-fi”
and each story explores the various uses for sex in the field: as
distraction or weapon, as recruitment or rapport between handler
and asset, and in some of these futuristic tales, sex is even used as
a means of transferring information and sharing secrets.

Our first story “Spook” by A.C. Wise tells the tale of a jaded

shapeshifting spy whose assignments in exotic locations and
various cover identities assumed from past lovers all blend
together, even as she contemplates her own nature and identity
based on what she is, has been, and might be at any given
moment. The identity crises don’t get any easier as we move on to
“Not Exactly Dead” by Chris Amies. In this foreboding speculative
fiction, Will Bruce is a spy infiltrating a homegrown group of
radicals. Though initially harmless-seeming this group is
determined to stop a corrupt politician who wants to take
advantage of the new class of undead beings and create an army
of cheap slave labor. And it’s up to Will to figure out where he truly
stands. Next, in “The Masterless Man” by T.C. Mill another
character must reevaluate his own stand in life—this time as a
potential asset. Allen Keir is an artist living in a futuristic dystopia
whose traffic photography installation becomes of great interest
to the Master class’s intelligence-gathering efforts—but Allen has

Introduction

grown accustomed to his Masterless state for quite a while now
and it’ll take more than mere patronage to convince him to agree
to any Master’s terms. Then, the past and future collide in A.J.
Viggen’s “Sleeper Agent” when Mark, a preserved “old school” spy
is revived in the year 2152, occupying a new body and cover
identity as a woman. Now it’s up to Mark-as-Angela to figure out
how to navigate in this new world and new body while deep
undercover. Shawn Erin then follows up with “Jasmine Always
Wins,” the bold and adventurous romp of Jack and Molly, two
sexually enhanced spies whose mission to undermine an enemy
minister’s formal party doesn’t go exactly as planned—and an orgy
breaks out. In our next story, “Living On Schizo Time”, Eric Del
Carlo introduces the reader to chronoagents—time-traveling
intelligence-gatherers and saboteurs—and Beth, a disheartened
and experienced chronoagent who finds reprieve from the futility
of her missions and isolation living out of time in the arms of
Darcy, another chronoagent just at the start of his career. We then
shift from time travelers to an epic space opera condensed into the

confines of a short story with Kaysee Renee Robichaud’s “Passing.”
When spy and revolutionary, Sukikun, meets up with Imperial

Seat-holder and psychic, Makioki, to share intelligence against the
corrupt government that has wronged them both, the pair finds
that exchange of intel via sexual intercourse is imperiled by a fight
for their lives. In “Knife, Gun, High Explosive” by Reina Delacroix,

the subversive acts of undercover agents is a bit more subtle.
Delacroix tells the story of two couples: one pair happens to be
on a government watch list for their subversive political and sexual
activities; the other couple is tasked with observing the first—but
find they grow more and more interested in what they must
observe with each encounter. And there is more voyeuristic
pleasure to be had still! In “A Private Moment,” Julian Oliver-Fenn
shares the story an intelligence analyst and monitor who has been
observing (and fantasizing about) the same woman for two years.
This monitor finally gets to live out his dream of active undercover

duty when he is tasked with seducing that same woman of interest

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

to learn how she is disseminating treasonous thoughts to her
lovers without ever seeming to break the law of speaking any
treason. And finally, debut author, Max Erica Scott, shares a story
of war, espionage, vengeance, and love in “Giving Up The Spook.”
In this emotive science-fiction tale, Seph Kitko is a young woman
forcibly conscripted into the military of the hostile occupying
forces responsible for her brother’s senseless murder. But when a
beautiful and enigmatic woman called Rhodo presents her with
the opportunity and means to sabotage her enemy from within its
own ranks, Seph struggles with the very real and personal
consequences of her own acts of war.

Ultimately, whether the spies in this anthology are uncovering

vast conspiracies by corrupt governments and organizations,
exploiting and enemy’s sole weakness, or growing disenchanted

with their own cause or methods, each sensual and action-packed
story features the struggle to maintain the tenuous balance
between intimacy and intrigue—a balance that is necessary in a
life of a spy. (Or any other couple who want to keep the mystery
and excitement alive!)

Bethany Zaiatz
January 2014

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

6

I am in London, Cairo, Paris, Milan. Some city, any city, lies strung
out below, jewel-glittering against the dark. The suite is every suite,
in every hotel; the girl—gathered from the noise-and-light of the
casino floor—any girl. But she has what I need.

I slip diamonds and sapphires around her neck—the promised

payment. A family heirloom, she claimed, long lost, and she, a
minor duchess from a mountain region with an unpronounceable
name. I claim to be an international jewel-thief, the best there is.
Only one of us has perfected the art of the lie.

My fingers are steady on the clasp. Hers seek the heavy, blue

stone resting against the hollow of her throat. The way she touches
it—tracing the facet lines, hungry, but still afraid—I know she’s
never worn anything quite so rich or beautiful before.

As she looks out over the city, the window ghosts her, leaving

her half vanished amidst the reflection. Behind her, I’m even less
seen. I watch her in the glass, tracing lips across the curve of her
shoulder, up to the press of her spine against her skin, just at the
nape of neck. My lips part, tasting her—smoke from the casino
layered over the acrid tang of expensive perfume, layered over fear.

She has what I need.
Her name is Tanya, Lily, Karen, Sophia; it blurs like the cities,

unimportant.

I trace the line of jewels around her throat, stopping my tongue

at the pulse-point below the curve of her jaw. I count each beat,
knowing which signify desire, and which fear.

There. Under the thin layer of her smoke-and-perfume skin

lies the imprint of other lips. For just a moment, my pulse speeds
to match hers. I know the taste—pale-amber whiskey and slightly
sweet, spicy-crackling cigarettes from India.

And for just a moment, I stand where Tanya, Lily, Karen, Sophia

Spook

A.C. Wise

stands, and the ghost in the glass behind me, face unseen, laughs.
My reflection hangs naked and vulnerable against the foreign
night, over a city I can’t name. Hot breath raises tiny hairs on my
skin, lips brush close to my ear. The voice—does it belong to a

woman with dark hair, hanging over a perfect shoulder? Or a man,
stubble rough against my neck as he speaks?

I can’t remember who I was then. I can’t remember who he,

or she, was either. But he or she taught me everything I know.

This is who we are. The words slide inside me as hands trace the

curve of my spine, grasp my hips and pull me close. We are ghosts,
spooks. We don’t exist. Each body you touch, you will become. Every taste, every sen-
sation, every smell will define you. You will drink memory, until you drown. This is
how we survive.

Another beat—my pulse, hers, and I am myself again. I am

nothing.

A fine shiver of hairs at the nape of Tanya, Karen, Lily, Sophia’s

neck teases my skin. A thin sheen of sweat rises to meet my tongue.
It tastes of desire—the desire to fly, to fall, to press fingers to the
window glass and have it disappear.

Silk pools at her feet; she steps free of the dress and stands

naked, pressing fingertips to the window and leaving whorls of
condensation behind. Touching her, I know what it is to want to
fly. I follow the curve of her spine, tongue gathering sweat until I
am on my knees.

I turn her gently, hands on the jut of her hip bones. She doesn’t

resist, even though she is in love with the view beyond the glass—
the glittering night and the long tumble into the dark. She is in
love with the thought of scattering herself across the pavement,
shattered and nameless, but always remembered as the woman
who fell.

The ghost of her fingerprints linger on the glass, tiny halos,

catching and breaking the light. She rests one hand on my
shoulder, the other returning to finger the jewel at her throat, the
hard nub of it, warming beneath her caress. My hands circle from
her hips to cup her from behind, pulling her close. Minute tremors

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

8

run across the muscles just beneath her skin—the quick-rabbit
pulse of fear and longing, soaking into my palms.

I slide my tongue between her legs, adding to the wetness there

before delving deeper. A faint sound of breath caught, and her
fingers tighten against my shoulder, nails leaving crescent moons
on my skin. Her shivering turns deep and primal. I hold her, and
keep her from falling for a moment longer.

In her sex, I taste her death. She will be dead before dawn. Not

by my hand, but I won’t stay the hand that kills her either. Hands.
Two. Fingers tight around her throat, bruising, thumbs pressed to
the hollow where the sapphire rests now, crushing her windpipe
so she can’t even scream.

She feels the shadow of her death coming, and she welcomes

it. This is what I need.

I circle her clit, take it gently between my lips. From my

shoulder, her hand moves up to tangle in my hair, pulling painfully
tight. I tease, pressing my tongue against the hot, swell of her
blood, the shivering need clustered in the sensitive nerves, barely
caged by a thin layer of skin.

Slow now, I draw out the moment, holding her on the edge.

She’s done running. Her fingertips have passed through the glass,
and she’s hanging over the shining city. This is the last good thing
she’ll ever feel.

When the moment becomes unbearable, need stretched razor-

thin to the point of breaking, emerging, as a low whimper from
her throat, I let her come.

Because I need this, too. I need the taste of her fear and the

trembling of her muscles beneath my hands. I need her fingers
gripping my hair, and the guilty-greedy touch wrapped around
the jewel at her throat. I need her to make my chameleon skin

flicker and change.

I need her daddy’s hard eyes, and her running, thin, scarred,

knobby knees pumping, chasing the curve of the railroad tracks
as sour sweat gathers in the hollows beneath her arms, just starting
to grow downy hair. And I’m so sorry, momma, but I can’t, hair
tangled in my face, chapped lips, cracked and bleeding in the cold,

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wrapped around the thick cock of some faceless man who offers
me a few bucks to get by. The distance run to here burns my
muscles, and everything she left behind, the fear buried beneath
the expensive perfume, and the hard resolve, fake name, and look
at me now, daddy, look at what I’ve become, and
everythingeverythingeverything.

I need it all, so that when I offer it up as my own, it won’t be

a lie.

I can’t break under torture. I give every person I meet exactly

what they need. And in return, they tell me everything I want to
know.

This is what he taught me. What she taught me. With hot

breath against my ear, our bodies ghosted in the glass, washed by
the sun rising over the Danube, Mississippi, Nile. My hands passed
through her skin, touched nothing. He didn’t exist. She smiled,

mocking.

Don’t be afraid. I’ll teach you how to disappear. I’ll teach you everything you

need to know.

His cock, hard and insistent against the yielding tightness of

my ass. Her fingers and tongue exploring the slick wetness of my
cunt.

When two spooks touch…
It is the taste of lightning searing the sky, electricity dripping

fat, blue sparks, falling from wires crossing and re-crossing
between vast metal towers. It is the smell of honey and ice and the
cold shock of water. It is the sight of dark chocolate, cigar smoke,
cab horns blaring through the dark. It is the feeling of cards sharp-
dealt into a winning hand, and a violin moaning against the
weight of the world. It is the sound of being tied to a chair, beaten
within an inch of your life, spitting teeth and blood. It is your first,
your last, your license to kill, your permission to become someone
else. It is everything you ever wanted from this life, and more.

We don’t exist. His hands pass through me for the first time,

sinking through skin, touching bone. She smiles, cruel. Do you
understand now? We are nothing. We are everything, and everyone.

Mist rises from the nameless river, blurring the world. Breath

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

10

lodges in my throat. I am afraid, looking at my reflection alone in
the glass. I want what I shouldn’t want, just one thing to hold onto

before I slip over the edge of the world.

Tell me your name, I say, your real name.
He looks at me with scorn. We don’t have names.
Teeth, too white and too perfect catch the edges of my skin

and bite down just hard enough to bruise. He gives me every piece
of cruelty he’s ever tasted, every kindness he’s ever received. He

gives me these with the teasing-light touch of his hands,
surprisingly gentle, shockingly soft for all that they should be
calloused from pistol grip and garrote wire. He runs the tip of one
finger along my length, tracing each nerve, each ridge of skin. His
thumb circles the head of my cock; the rest of his hand wraps
around me, caressing me with long, slow strokes. His lips trace

throat and collarbone, ending next to my ear. You can be anyone,
anything.

His hand moves faster, squeezing, insistent. My pulse beats in

time with the rhythm. Fingers arc down my spine, slip deeper, and
tease my anus, tracing the tight ring of muscle.

Let go. Those teeth, too white and too perfect, close on the back

of my neck, dominant, possessive.

My body arches in response, and I come, hot against his

grasping hand. He rolls me over, legs braced between mine,
spreading them. I take his hand, suck his fingers into my mouth
one by one. Beneath the salty, pearlescent taste of my own sex, my
tongue finds a scar, faint, but imprinted deep in his flesh, circling
his middle finger at the softest part of his hand, where a ring
might sit if he wore one. Teeth, biting down hard enough to leave
a mark. Tongue-traced the scar becomes mine. Frost-bitten fingers,
a cold sunk deep in my bones. A woman with dark hair and darker
eyes closes teeth against skin as if she would sever my finger from
my hand. Pine-sharp scent, and blinding snow. She bucks, half
rage, half hunger, struggling against me, her mouth slick with my
blood.

His hand is mine. Her hand is mine. Her teeth are his, closed

on my finger. Her mouth is on mine, and I am her.

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Now you’re learning. She whispers, mouth blood-hot against my skin.

She gives me hate with the hardness in her eyes. Her muscles

taut for a fight, teach me the art of never backing down. She will
never break; I will not bend, no matter what is done to me.

Her hand slides down my belly. Her finger is slick with my

desire the moment she enters me. My hips rise to meet her, and
she is me, and I am her. She moves inside me, soft first. One finger,

then two, hardhardhard, erasing the line between pleasure and
pain.

We don’t exist. Finger and thumb take my nipple, pinching. She

smiles. My body responds, bucking, grinding bone against bone.

Wait. The word passes my lips, panted and barely audible.
It’s too late, she says.
She traces one hand across my belly, a line of fire drawing a

response from the muscles underneath, tensing them with desire
and fear. When she draws away, touching herself instead, I feel the
absence as though she’s ripped away a layer of my skin.

One hand between my legs, one hand between hers. Her

wetness, my wetness. Her pulse, my pulse. Our breath. Our desire.
I am inside me.

Her fingers sink through me, touching the deepest part of me,

and touching nothing.

This is you, she tells me. And there is nothing here.
Her fingers, my fingers, I, she, we.
I bite down on my lip and taste her blood. And she makes me

come. Over and over again.

He makes me come.
I make me come.
I am, we are, stripped raw, flayed naked to the bone. There is

nothing at my core, only the desire to leave behind everything that
I am, everything I was, and vanish.

And when I am broken, he reshapes me. His touch adds layers

of skin to a shattered frame of bone as he strokes every part of me.

She gives me lips full and thin, eyes green and blue and brown
flecked with gold, skin the color of burnt wood and the sun rising
behind a cloud. Everyone he has ever been. Everyone she will ever

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

12

be. Flickering, changing, until I am not me anymore. Never was,
and never will be.

Now do you understand?
I nod.
This is who you are, who you have always been.
Yes, I answer. She answers. He answers. We answer.
Spent and raw, bruised and bloody, content and full for a

moment I seek respite. I trace the scar marking his shoulder with
a languorous tongue. In the hardened ridge of flesh, I taste the

blade that put it there, slashing hot and tight. I become his body
in the moment of being ripped open, laid bare.

When my fingers follow her ribs, moving down her side, I feel

the bullet punching through her thigh, shattering her bone. I feel
every moment of her pain, every heartbeat, and being so alive.

In his kiss, I taste whiskey, long nights, and cigarettes smoked

watching the sun stain the sky in orange and ink and gold.

In her cooling sweat, I taste punishing jungle heat, and the

swing of a machete in my calloused hand.

And for just a moment, I think I could stay. I don’t have to run.

I’ve found what I was looking for all along—someone who knows
who I am.

Before I can speak, his fingers grip my jaw, bruising tight,

turning my face to hers, forcing me to look into eyes that are every
color and no color at all.

That’s not how it works.
And when I think there is nothing left to give, she and he and

I and me and we and they make me come again, breaking the last
of my resistance, carrying me over the edge, vanishing me.

Fingers sink through skin, into bone, into nothing at all.

Nothing has ever hurt this much. Nothing has ever felt this good.

I don’t exist. I never did. I never will again.
I rise from my knees in a hotel room in Cairo, Paris, London,

Milan. Tanya, Lily, Karen, Sophia’s face is turned away. She doesn’t
look at me. If she did, would she recognize me? How many people
really know who they really are? How many know when they’ve

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been changed, when something fundamental has been stolen from
them, or when they’ve given it away willingly with a simple
touch?

As I leave, she whispers a name.
For just an instant, I can’t help the breath-catch, wondering

whether that name is the name. The beat skipped leaves an empty
space, my heart drops, clattering against my ribs. It isn’t the name.
It never will be, but this name, the one Tanya, Lily, Karen, Sophia
gives me will bring me one step closer, closing the distance by half.

And half again. Every time. Space is infinitely divisible. We will

never reach each other, never touch. The closest we will every come
is two ghosted reflections, separated by a space of glass high above
every city in the world. That is the way it will always be, always
running, always chasing, reaching, but never bridging the distance

in between.

This is what happens when two spooks touch. We destroy each

other. We destroy ourselves.

I leave Paris, London, Cairo, and Milan. I leave behind a throat

circled in sapphire and diamonds, circled in the ghost of future
bruises the color of violets. I vanish into the sky, weightless,
transitory and liminal, and touch down again in Dubai, Zurich,
Hong Kong, Montreal.

Another city, another smear of light, and I lower my lashes over

a hint of fear. I welcome my death, and it’s enough to bring me
the man with the name that Tanya, Lily, Karen, Sophia gave me. A
man with accounts scattered all across the world, filled with
embezzled funds. A man who is tired of running, who recognizes
a kindred soul in a woman who ran away a long time ago, and
never stopped, but wants so badly to stop now.

His name is Richard, Kevin, Benny, Jack. The shape of it falls

away from my lips, already forgotten. We climb to the top of
another hotel, another room overlooking another city. We drink
white wine, glasses chill and sweating in our hands. I give him my
past, everything I took from Tanya, Lily, Karen, Sophia, and it’s
exactly what he needs to hear. Falling into crisp-folded sheets, I

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

14

spread my legs and take him in, take all of him in, in ways he’ll
never understand.

Beneath the weary taste of his sweat, gathered from the hollow

between his neck and his collarbone as he moves inside me, I taste

hope.

Because he is there. She is there. I am there. The imprint of

fingers that have been here before me and left traces on this man’s
skin.

This is the way it’s always been. She is always vanishing, one

step ahead of me. I’m always a moment too slow to catch him.

And so it goes.
I get paid. I turn Richard, Kevin, Benny, Jack over to the people

who wanted him so badly, to take back what he stole. And I lift off
again, falling through the sky toward Venice, Stockholm, Mexico
City, and an international drug ring, a turn-coat, triple-cross ex-
spy, a madman bent on taking over the world by blowing up the
moon with a rocket made of pure gold.

It doesn’t matter where I’m going. I’m always chasing the same

thing—a ghost who sunk fingers deep into my skin, took the core

of me, and made me what I am.

The only person who really knows me.
I never got to thank her. I never got to pay him back for what

he gave me, for teaching me everything I know.

But I will one day.
Nothing can stop me. I can go anywhere. Become anyone. I

am a master of disguise. I can bend anyone to my will. I can
disappear in plain sight.

This is what I am—a spook, a ghost, a spy. I don’t exist. This is

what I have always been.

Now do you understand?

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At the foot of the brick warehouse wall a solitary figure wandered
along, bumped into a wastepaper bin, and walked on. Will had

seen a lot of them about. In the early mornings, figures in the
remnants of business clothes, walking to the railway station for
trains they never caught; in the afternoons and evenings shabby
individuals making their way to the pubs and betting shops only
to be turned back when they got there. Creatures who

remembered only their habits.

Will couldn’t remember the official term but he’d heard people

call them Neds. NED: Not Exactly Dead. He turned away to face
the other occupant of the room.

t

The woman in the white T-shirt and grey leggings paced to and
fro. The bar, its walls peeling with damp, seemed too small to con-
tain her, and beyond the window the snarl of daytime traffic was
muted. She brushed a strand of reddish hair away from her face as
the man looked at her.

“I need to be doing something,” she said. “Why doesn’t he call

us? Tuesday?”

It took the man a second or two to remember that Tuesday was

a person, not a day—at least if she hadn’t meant “why doesn’t he
call us on Tuesday?”

“He said he’d call when he’d done it,” Will said. “Don’t worry,

Emma.”

“Easy for you to say,” she said.
Will Bruce supposed it was. He’d forgotten about Gerald

‘Tuesday’ Tuesfield when he woke up this morning, blinking in
the poor light of an early dawn, rolling over in the little bed in

Not Exactly Dead

Chris Amies

what had once been a staff bedroom. The pub was still nominally
open and Will and Emma nominally worked there, as cover, but
nobody came in apart from a few drunks who were either too
persistent to give up or too far gone to be sensitive to atmosphere;
NEDs who came into the pub and drifted around, sipped at pints
of lager, went away.

The night before, Will asked one of them,
“What is it you want?”
“Want?” the man asked, grey-faced. “I don’t want anything.”
Tuesday was always off about, in between stomping around

the upper room complaining that he was the only one who was
angry, while the others—Will and Emma and the now-absent
rest—were ‘sort of slightly annoyed.’

“He won’t even say what he was doing,” Emma complained.
“No,” Will Bruce said, “he won’t. Surely that’s better?
Will, passing himself off as someone with a knowledge of

electrics, had swept the room for bugs but they still had to keep
discipline. Of course he’d added a bug or two, up-to-the minute
stuff he’d sourced from Taiwan, and if those were found then he
was dealing with pros.

Personally Will doubted it. He didn’t think this lot were up to

much, threat-wise. Emma Kessler was a nice little rich girl—if a
bit of a lost soul—and although Gerald Tuesfield was a loose
cannon he was too shapeless to do any real harm; although you
never knew. Perhaps he just wouldn’t care, storm in guns blazing—
perhaps literally—and never mind what hits he took.

“What about the other members?” he asked. “Your, er,

comrades?”

The young woman shrugged, a sinuous movement that

reminded Will of a former girlfriend taking off her clothes. He was
surprised at the moment of clarity; or was it his imagined life that
came from, the lot of the angry working man he claimed to be?

“Who knows?” she said. “They’re out there somewhere.”
“Tell me about the band,” he said.
She sighed, walked over to sit by him.

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“It was fun while it lasted,” she said. “but I don’t know if we’ll

ever play again.” She smiled. “The band lasted for five years and a
bit, Josh and Kathy and Tim and me. Trouble was, some of them
got into the family thing, and others saw rehearsals as an excuse
for a piss-up. By the end nobody cared.”

She put an arm along the back of the sofa. Will could feel her

warmth, and smell a strange, somehow nostalgic perfume. He was
sure that someone in his past had used something like that.

“And you played—”
“Bass,” she said. “The female bass player as cliché... not. Sounds

Magazine thought we were fab, Click said we sounded like we’d
heard about rock music without having heard any—and that was
a good thing.” She shifted round, reached out a finger to touch
the front of his black polo shirt.

“Now tell me about you,” she said.
“The usual stuff,” he said. “Went into the Army, hated it but

learnt a trade, came out, worked to pay the mortgage and all that,
got a now-ex-wife who hates me, no kids, got pissed off with this
government and decided it was time for a change.”

Much of that was true; even the ex-wife, Samantha, though he

could not remember her apart from a cloud of black hair around
a round face, like she was two circles off-centre. He was sure that
at one stage this distancing had mattered to him, but now it
seemed not to. The easy if bitter life of the divorced electrician
with a grudge seemed simpler; go to the pub with his mates,
watch the football, and so on. And then somehow he’d—perhaps
because his wife had kept the house, left him drifting from flat to
lodging to flat—fetched up in this half-derelict pub as part of a
shapeless mob of wannabe anarchists who might, just might, be
planning something for real.

“I once said she was like a toy robot that kept on going, on and

on. She thought I meant it positively. I didn’t. Best off without her.”

Her finger was still there, pressing. He looked at the mouth in

that sharp, blue-eyed face and very much wanted to kiss it, to lick
her lips from the inside...

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

18

For a moment he thought she was up for just that, but instead

she took her hand away and rummaged in her bag, rolled a cigarette.

“Why doesn’t he call?” she muttered. “Maybe something’s

happened.”

“Then what happened?” Will asked. “After you left the band.”
She looked at him bleakly. She had blue eyes in a face framed by

unruly reddish-brown hair. Twenty-nine years old (how, he
wondered, did he know that? He was sure she’d never told him)...

“I shagged the Home Secretary,” she said.
Will Bruce blinked. It was as though he half knew that already,

but it was also somehow news to him.

“Yes, I did,” Emma said. “I met the Home Secretary—Brian Pavey,

responsible for law ‘n’ order within the borders of the UK and all
that—at the BRIT awards. His wife was away at their house in Spain.
He plied me with white wine and made me laugh—though I’m not
sure he knew why I was laughing. It was just all so obvious.

“And the next day he called me up, took me for dinner at the

Dorchester, and slept with me in a suite upstairs. Suite dreams are
made of this, he said. Who was I to disagree?

“And y’see,” Emma said, “some people would now ask me if he

was any good. Why don’t you?”

“All right,” said Will, “was he any good?”
“Cracking,” Emma said, with a grin. “We met again and again.”

She sat back on the settee, the cigarette unlit as she played with it

between her fingers. “He wanted me to go on the payroll as a
researcher. I told him I was aware that a lot of researchers do most of
their research in the horizontal position—”

“Allegedly,” Will said.
“Allegedly,” Emma said, grinning at them being on each other’s

wavelength. She put a hand on his thigh but made no other move

towards him. “But I didn’t fancy being a Party apparatchik. I came
here instead.”

“Besides,” she said, “I didn’t want to be in the papers as ‘Home

Secretary’s Lover.’ I never loved him.”

“No?”
“No. He had his wife for that.” She looked straight ahead. The

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hand was still there and Will covered it with his own. “He did once
say ‘I love you!’ when he came but I told him never to say that.”

But Will could imagine the rather puritanical Home Secretary, a

man fond of demanding that there be jail time for all sorts of random
offences, loving this woman so unlike him.

“And,” he asked, “do you still see him?”
“No,” she said. She looked at Will, put her other arm round his

neck, slid against him. “I’m all right, aren’t I?”

“You are,” Will Bruce said, and this time did kiss her. Her lips

were soft and warm. He put his hand out to her T-shirt, felt one firm,
braless breast under the cloth, felt the nipple hardening under his
fingers. This time it was her turn to put her hand over his. His other
arm went round her waist and he pulled her onto him. With a
movement of those long, long legs she was on his lap, pushing
against him and he felt his cock harden in his jeans as she rode back
and forth on it.

They kissed again, a collision of mouths, tongues flickering over

one another’s. He tried to move away from her mouth and kiss her
face, but she brought him back to centre. Then she disengaged from
him, took her T-shirt hem in her hands and pulled the shirt off over
her head. Her pale-skinned body, firm high breasts bare, came so

well to his arms.

“Let’s have sex,” she said.
“Now,” Will said, “you put it like that...”
Emma Kessler laughed and tugged at Will’s shirt. He got the clue

and took it off. Standing up, Emma removed the leggings and her
lacy, peach-coloured knickers, placing them on a side-table. Her pale
body seemed too fragile for this place with its musty curtains and

peeling walls. She led him by the hand, a naked nymph at her play,
to her bedroom. White curtains at the windows, a low double bed.

She stopped, turned to him. He undid his belt, took off his jeans,

eased his underpants over his proud erection. Then he went to his
knees on the thin blue carpet. She stepped forward.

“You’ve done this before,” she said in a while, her hands

caressing his head, fingers in his hair.

He couldn’t answer, tongue otherwise engaged.

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

20

Finally, she moved his head away and pulled him onto the bed.

She reached into the bedside locker and then rolled back to him as
he knelt there. She put the condom on him with a deft, swift
movement and pulled him down. He gazed down at her, lovingly,
reached down to guide himself into her. She grunted.

Her legs wrapped round his waist and he thrust harder.
“Fuck me, damn you,” she said. “Fuck me.” Maybe her eyes were

closed at this point—he couldn’t tell, as his were. Somewhere below
him she cried out. Her fingers dug into his back and he felt the
familiar sensation cresting. He held off for what seemed like an age
and then let himself come. How long had it been? Long enough that
his orgasm went on and on for what, also, seemed like aeons,
shuddering as though a world died in pain.

“Oh fuck,” she said.

t

“Who are you?” she asked, as they lay side by side on the bed, half-
propped up on the pillows, touching each other, fingers exploring
lazily.

“I told you,” Will said. “An angry electrician with an ex-wife who

hates him.”

She looked at him.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said.
“Why do men always say that?” she asked, smiling.
“They don’t,” he said. “It’s just that they always say it to you.”
“Thanks,” she said, running a hand down his body to his now

flaccid cock. A moving hand had little effect.

“But you didn’t answer the question,” she said.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Misunderstanding, she laughed, thinking he’d suggested that was

the question. But he had forgotten for a second. Emma, he thought.
Not Emily, not Gemma; he’d tried both, held them up to the light to
see if they fit. Her hand was still moving but—

“You can tell me,” she said, leaning against him, one long arm

now draped round his shoulders, pulling him close. He nuzzled into

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her hair and examined the tiny freckles that dotted her temples.

“Did you,” he asked, a thought not so much striking him as

running an unwelcome hand across his person, “tell Tuesday about...”

“Brian?” she asked. “This and that. Not much.”
“Oh,” he said. The thought was at very least pushing him about

now; actual striking was bound to occur very soon.

He got up, feeling her hands slide off his shoulders, her moving

away disappointed.

“Why don’t you come back to bed,” she said, parting her legs

and pointing her sex at him. But Will Bruce was rummaging in the
pile of discarded clothes.

“He’s the target,” Will said. “Tuesday’s going to kill the Home

Secretary...”

“He’d never,” Emma said. “He hasn’t the guts. None of them do.

The sort of pranks they’re up to involve vandalising National Trust
properties, or throwing green paint over Churchill’s statue in the
name of the working class. A lot of the working class like old houses
and revere Churchill so what good does that do? Painting graffiti

along tube lines, which might have been cool in the ‘sixties but now
it gets covered in tags within days. He might chuck a pie into Mr
Pavey’s face, but that’s about it. Mind you even flanning can get you
into deep doodoo these days.”

“You don’t care,” Will said, “do you?”
Emma stood up and walked across to him as he picked up his

clothes. She reached for something on the chest of drawers and Will
lunged for her wrist, but she picked up a phone, switched it on.

“There’s me and Brian,” she said. A picture of a sleek-looking

man accompanied by a black-haired pale-faced woman dressed in a
black top and what seemed to be black PVC trousers with a
transparent outer layer. “That was my monochrome era. Black hair,
black gear.”

“Hottie,” Will said.
“That’s what they all say,” she said. “It’s like being telepathic. I

can tell what all the guys are thinking: I’d love to fuck her, and I never will.

“But him. Brian. He looks all right but you have no idea. You

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

22

thought ‘pig-fucker’ was just a term of abuse, didn’t you?” She
stood by his shoulder, naked, trembling. He put an arm round her
waist. “You’ve seen the people in the streets—the NEDs. Not
Exactly Dead. The Gov wants to use them as a cheap workforce.
Too dazed to complain, too confused to argue. Differently metabolic
was another of the brute’s phrases. I heard him use it on the phone
to the Prime Minister. I was sucking his dick at the time in his
private office overlooking the Thames.

“It’s too late,” she said. “Now come back to bed and fuck me.”
Somewhere at the back of his mind there was a reason not to.

Wood-panelled rooms in another office block overlooking the river,
people in dark suits, a basement where they kept evidence that was

hidden even from the Prime Minister herself. But it faded away; the

things in glass jars taken from the craft that crashed in the Atlantic
and which was made of no known alloy, and the evidence of a
plague more emotional than physical in content, the report sub-
mitted by Lawrence Harrison, the Institute’s Chief Scientist, found
hanged a month later and nobody believed it was suicide.

And then, part of him saw no reason why. Particularly, he

admitted, the part that was growing between his legs. And yet the
images of the strange things in jars, the wood-panelled rooms, the
blandly-named Institute for Foreign (read: Alien) Research; wasn’t

that all just a movie he’d seen long ago? He took off his
underpants.

“I think,” Emma said as she sat on him, her strong hands

pinioning his wrists to the bed, “you’re a cop.”

“No,” he said. Truthfully, although it was hard (so to speak) to

remember what he was.

“You wouldn’t be lying, now, would you?” she said, leaning

forward so her hard cinnamon-coloured nipples touched his chest.
She moved backward until her arse-crack was touching his
erection.

“I told you what I am,” he said, knew he could break her hold

if he so wished; stop Tuesday killing Pavey if it wasn’t already too
late; but wasn’t there something else?

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She raised herself over him and put long, cool fingers around

his cock.

“Were you sent to stop me?” she asked.
“Don’t stop,” he begged.

t

But they had to stop. The knock on the door was specific: three,
pause, one, pause, three.

“He’s back,” she said. “Tuesday. Unless those bastards have

caught him and frogmarched him to the door.”

She got off him, pulled her T-shirt on—it was decent at least

from the front—and he heard the stairs creak as she went
downstairs.

There were raised voices. After a while, two sets of footsteps

pounded upstairs. Will Bruce was dressed and alert when the door
burst open.

A bulky figure in a scarlet blouse, black skirt and black crepe-de-

chine jacket, black stockings and blue DM boots. His head close-
cropped grey hair atop a grey face. Behind him, Emma.

“The fucker’s dead,” he said, his voice hoarse and with a broad

Geordie accent. “And you,” he said, pointing at Will, “are fucking
dead too, son.”

“I don’t think so,” Will said levelly, his pulse quickening.
“That wasn’t a threat, son,” Tuesday told him. “You, my lad, are

dead. Me too. Don’t you remember?”

“Frankly, no,” Will replied.
Tuesday turned to Emma, who had gone to stand by Will.
“All right then,” Tuesday said, “They’ve got you good and proper,

ha’n’t they? Were you listening to Charlie on the telly this morning?”

“Who?”
“Charlie. His Britannic Majesty King George the Seventh. Or did

you miss hearing that the Queen died?” Tuesday shook his terrible
head. Emma had climbed into her knickers and leggings behind him.

“Officially regretting,” Tuesday went on, “that us NEDs are

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

24

officially non-persons courtesy of the Home Office and can, well,
just fuck off.” He stopped, suddenly looked vaguely around him,
shrugged his shoulders and stomped downstairs.

“Oh they won’t,” Emma said, stepping forward into the pool

of light from the room’s lampshade. Will looked at her with a pang
of something undefinable, a feeling that didn’t have a name.
Regret, perhaps.

“Too late,” she said, sadly. “I knew you might try to stop

Tuesday from doing what he did.”

“You knew?”
“You don’t remember, do you?” she said. “Yes, the band; yes,

the affair with the Home Secretary. But I was also working for the
Institute—the IFR.” She sighed. “Sometimes politicians get above
themselves,” she said decisively. “So you were infiltrating us, to
find that job had already been done, by me. And poor Tuesday, he’s
just a victim. Plausible deniability and all that, me feeding him no
info that could be traced, just suggestions. Has the sickness far

worse than you. I like it in you, it makes you uncomplicated.”

“And the rest of the group?” Will asked, sitting beside Emma

on the bed.

“There were more once,” Emma said. “But not now. It’s just

you, him and me.

“Oh Will,” she said, and the shadows seemed to darken in the

room. “You have no idea what it would have been like if he’d lived.
An army of NEDs, no better than slaves, an army of cheap labour,
even being made to fight to the death for their masters’
amusement. The sickness spreading, spreading.”

It was raining outside now, and the sky was a metallic brown

above the rain-lashed grey of the roofs. Will looked into the eyes
of the girl beside him.

“You saw that?” he asked. She nodded.
“Things you can’t imagine,” she said, leaning back on the

pillows. “This way at least we give people a chance to work on a
cure. Otherwise, well, y’know, the NED army would be too
valuable to do away with. And I’m sorry that you got a dose, but

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

you were there when the canister was opened. Oh,” she said, eyes
wide, “oh, you don’t remember that?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember anything. I was with the IFR?”

“You were,” she said. “We both were. Never knew each other

but we were both there. But the Institute keeps people on retainers,
y’see. They can be doing their day job then, well, you’re called
back. Happened to me, happened to you. And they said to me,

Emma, go and slip inside a little group of troublemakers and make

them work for you. Us.” She looked down, drew up her knees and
slid her hands under them. “I don’t think your name is Will Bruce
either. I suppose you could say, it is now. Like a stage name. A name

for a new stage of your life now you’re not exactly dead. Indeed,
I think you’re nothing like dead. Not at all.”

“And you aren’t afraid,” he asked, “of catching the sickness?”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t work that way. And there’s some

evidence that regular sex may stop it spreading—might even
reverse it. Which is quite a nice thought.”

“But how?” he asked. “How did you see those things? The

things you talked about. The army of NEDs, the spreading sickness?
And what happens now?” He faced her, alarmed. “A shadowy
Government department assassinates a minister—where does it
end?”

She kissed him.
“Don’t ask,” she said. “Just let it wash over you. Now hold onto

me.”

They could hear Tuesday thumping about downstairs, and the

front door opening and slamming shut. Outside, the rain kept up
its drumming on the roofs and the pavements and the people
passing by.

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

26

Allen Keir knew how very rare he was: an artist whose lifestyle
was more interesting than his work.

Not that traffic photography wasn’t a groundbreaking study; a

strange and sometimes charming way of looking at something as
invisible as the country thoroughfare. Allen wouldn’t have created
these sorts of pictures if he didn’t believe in their value to his
clients. That was because he couldn’t afford to offer anything but
the best, having only clients and not a patron. Allen Keir was a
Masterless man.

He lived from show to show, and for the past seven years it

had kept him from needing Charity. Not as if many of the Charities
would be willing to take him in anyway. Where Masters looked for
talent and obedience, Charities would only support those who kept

to certain codes of conduct, and there, too, Allen’s lifestyle was

rather atypical.

But there was no reason for such pessimistic thoughts now.

Allen turned to this show’s centerpiece: a wide shot of three red
cars as they passed each other at an intersection. He’d never have
made it without the AI driving his car, but the expensive
technology—in navigation and photography—had paid off: three
slick cherry-red shapes, for a split second forming an elegant

triangle against the gray sky, a navy station wagon in the middle
ground, the yellow glow of street lamps at the borders. The
composition might have been deliberate, but of course it wasn’t.
Just luck.

In shaping his brand, Allen had made a point of not even

suggesting titles, leaving that up to the ultimate buyer. In this case,
he couldn’t even imagine a title that might do the subtle, striking
image justice.

“Stunning,” a voice said behind him.

The Masterless Man

T.C. Mill

Allen turned, pleasant smile plastered across his face. “Isn’t it?

Another moment fiddling with the soundset and I might have
missed my chance.”

“It makes me wonder what we all miss, going through our

narrow lives.” The stranger smiled. His lips were full and lightly
coated with pearlescent color, matching the silver of his bleached
hair. His skin was dark against it, smooth as velvet stroked in the
right direction. At first Allen wondered if it was colored, too, but
the tone shifted naturally as the man shook his head, changing the

angles of the light striking his long cheekbones and jaw.

“But enough of that.” He stepped closer to Allen, who was torn

between irritation and a measure of relief at having the philosophy
his work prompted passed over so quickly.

In a lower voice, the stranger said, “I’d like to make you an

offer, Mr. Keir.”

Allen’s hands slipped into his pockets, his habitual bargaining

position. “I’m glad to hear it. Of course the show will last for a
few weeks yet, and the centerpiece has to remain in place for at
least—”

“Oh, not for the art.” He stood so close that his breath brushed

Allen’s face. His lip color was faintly scented, like salt and spice.

“I’m not seeking patronage.”
“My Master isn’t seeking an artist, talented though you are.

Instead he sees another use for your skills.”

Allen wanted to turn away, cut off this conversation before it

started. But this fancy boy’s Master might be one of the clients
drifting through the gallery, or at least a friend to some of them.
An influential friend. A trendsetter.

He nodded stiffly. “Go on. What sort of use?”
“Perhaps I should introduce myself first.” The stranger drew an

identity card from his breast pocket and held it up for Allen’s
inspection. The dangling bondsman’s ribbon was blood red—Allen
forgot which Master that indicated. The card claimed to belong to
Devan Lamott, but there was a pristineness to the ivory plastic and
silk ribbon that suggested a prop, a fake.

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

28

And so Allen got the gist of the offer even before the man said

anything more.

Devan stepped up to the centerpiece picture, peering closely.

Creases appeared amid the folds at the corners of his eyes, enough
to show he was getting mature for the fancy-boy style. Whether it
was also an act, Allen wasn’t sure. He tried to stay circumspect about
his preferences, but if whoever this man’s Master was knew his tastes
well enough to cater to them…clearly he wasn’t circumspect enough.

“Here,” Devan said. A manicured nail tapped the window of the

navy-blue station wagon. Allen squinted at the picture, but couldn’t
see anything of interest. Then Devan was taking a camera-
communicator from his pocket, snapping a photo, magnifying it
with a touch of his fingers. The silhouette of the passenger became
distinguishable. A few more manipulations, and she sprang to life
with color and details.

“You use one of these for your work, right?” Devan held the

device up before Allen’s face.

He was going to remark that he used a more powerful version,

but he realized from the resolution of the image that Devan’s was
more powerful than the standard. “Yeah,” he said ruefully. “The best
of them are far more powerful than most people realize.”

“We realize.”
“And who are you?”
Devan smiled. It took years off him, years that hadn’t rested very

heavily in the first place. “Now look at the passenger. She’s holding a
card.”

“An identity card—with a blue ribbon.”
“And what is she doing?”
He swallowed. “Tearing off a Charity Stripe.” The deep forest

green of the Unitarian Mission. Well, someone would be glad enough
to take her place—one of the hundreds who needed help but
couldn’t meet the approval of other Charities, the persisting minority

who weren’t of use to any prospective Masters. Or who were too
proud to sign themselves over to one.

Devan nodded. “She belongs to Miriam Noelle now, if I judge

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the blue right. She must be on her way home from signing the
Contract. Mistress Noelle likes to keep her new bondspeople secret
at first—but with just a moment of carelessness and a click of the
camera, one of her secrets slips out. Think of what we all miss, going
through our narrow lives, that a photographer might capture.” He
looked under his eyelashes at Allen. “Think what you could capture.”

“Your Master wants to recruit me as a spy, then?” Allen asked.

“He offers generous support, and it would make little difference

to your lifestyle. We may suggest certain intersections or streets for
you to shoot at, we might ask for a first look at your portfolio, and
for access to pictures you might otherwise discard—”

Allen whipped out his ident card and held it up. In all its bare

plastic glory, it was free from bondsman’s ribbon as much as Master’s
border, and there wasn’t even a shadow of a torn-away Charity stripe.
“I’ve been self-supporting since I reached my majority. I like it that
way.”

“It’s a hard life,” Devan said. “Terribly uncertain.”
“At least I don’t have to jump whenever a Master snaps his fingers,

wondering what favors I owe this time.”

“Some of those favors can be quite pleasant.” Devan’s voice took

on a silken quality. “You don’t need to fear losing yourself to my
Master’s demands. He wants you because of what you are.”

“I’m an artist, not a spy.”
“Anyone can be a spy,” Devan said, almost gently.
“The offer is, of course, generous,” Allen said. “And of course

I’m honored, but I must confess I have no interest in Contracting at
this time. If you’ll excuse me—”

Devan’s slender hand closed on his arm as Allen turned away. The

bondsman leaned close, speaking into his ear.

“That business aside, I have a personal offer to make. My address.

I’ll be home next Sixthday afternoon, alone and undisturbed for some
hours.”

He smiled shyly at Allen’s stare, a flush deepening his rich color.

“We bondsmen have desires, too.”

“Desires your Master doesn’t satisfy?”

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

30

If anything, Devan’s smile broadened at that. Allen’s stomach

flipped. There was danger in this invitation, too, but… He’d been
cautious in the weeks leading up to this show, when eyes were on
him. Nothing to disturb the moral qualms of even the most

conservative buyer. He hadn’t had a liaison since New Year’s, and
extended celibacy didn’t agree with him.

“Don’t wait for me,” he said sharply.
Devan shrugged and held out an infotab. It would have directions

to his apartment. Allen accepted it, as there was no way for him to
refuse without causing a scene.

The bondsman nodded to him. “I’ll be there, nonetheless.”

t

Devan Lamott’s apartment was in a high rise near the heart of the
city, though on one of the cheaper levels—far up enough to be

inconvenient, not enough to be prestigious. The elevator trip was so

long as to be nerve-wracking. Allen’s nerves were wracked as it was.
His brain kept screaming that this was a stupid idea, while his skin
felt so sensitive that the brush of his linen suit was leaving him raw.
All his buttons and zippers were too tight. His harsh breathing filled
the small car, and he tried to steady it before any other passengers
joined him.

As it was, nobody did, and the hallway the elevator landed on

was empty. His footsteps all but echoed. He imagined he was the
only person here, he and the man waiting for him, and his breath
went short again.

There were fancy boys everywhere, plenty for rent. He should

have found one of them, rather than get tangled with the business
of a Master who was already interested in him. But there was
something about Devan—a certain elegance made up of confidence

and composure, even more than beauty.

Allen had passed some time in the shower the past few mornings

by imagining him losing that composure. A well-groomed fancy boy
was an aesthetic treat…a dirty one was much, much better.

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And then, making Devan happy—as he certainly intended to—

might go a long way to smoothing relations with his Master, or at
least filtering any reports the bondsman passed on to him about
Allen. Damage control.

By the time Allen reached the right apartment number, he had

almost convinced himself this was a good idea.

The door slid open smoothly at his knock.
Devan was unpainted this time, his lips rusty-rose against his

skin, though his hair was as pale as ever. It looked slightly mussed,
and his clothing, though high quality, looked distinctly lounged
in. In fact, it looked as if Devan had spent most of the morning
tossing and turning, waiting restlessly for Allen’s arrival.

Or was that his imagination getting away from him again? Maybe

Devan had crafted this look, suspecting how it would affect him.

“Hello,” Devan said.
Allen nodded stiffly, and stepped inside as he held the door for

him.

It was a small place, living area with cooking appliances against

one wall, a pair of clouded glass doors leading to the bedroom.
What it did have, though—and this was enough to suggest Devan
was high in his Master’s favor, to receive this apartment or enough
credit to rent it—was a stunning view. The outer wall, running

through the living room and bedroom though seeming to stop at
the bath, was fully transparent. The neighboring building ended
just below, offering a clear view of its rooftop park, an emerald in
the silver-and-slate skyline.

Allen found himself pressed to the window, his artist’s eye

drinking the sight in. A couple walked along the terraces below, and
the woman suddenly stopped, posing for her companion to snap a
photo of her. Her ruby skirt streamed in the breeze like a flag.

“Have you ever taken pictures of a lover?” Devan asked beside

him.

“No.” Allen refused to appear surprised or unsettled. Or to

reveal that he found the soft voice murmuring at his ear as
arousing as he did. “I haven’t had a lot of steady lovers.”

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

32

Devan’s arm slipped around his waist. “Me neither.”
Their heights were matched; Allen turned to look him in the eyes.

Brown eyes, but with streaks of silver in the iris. Modified or just
ornamented with contacts, Allen couldn’t tell. They made Devan look
slightly more, or less, than human. Perhaps that was the point.

He leaned forwards and kissed the smooth brown skin beneath

one eye. Long lashes grazed his top lip, and he tasted a faint, salty
sweetness. He traced his mouth down Devan’s face, over his cheek
and around the sharp edge of his nose, to where full lips were already
parting to receive him. Devan smelled natural now, more of musk
than spice, and Allen liked the intimacy of the uncovered scent. He
ran his hands down Devan’s back, from wide shoulders down the
curve of his spine to a firm ass.

Devan moaned into his mouth, almost a growl. But before Allen

could respond to that he had slipped away, out of his arms, only to
go to the bedroom doors and push them open. Allen could see the
bed clearly now: white sheets, mattress like a slab of marble—and,
far more intriguing, a collection of long, silky cords wrapped around

the bedposts.

He turned with raised eyebrows to Devan, who leaned easily

against the doorframe, arms crossed. His sleeves had ridden up,
revealing slender wrists. Allen imagined the pulse jumping in them,
mirroring his own. He joined Devan at the threshold.

“So if we...” He cleared his throat. “What would your Master

think if he found out about this?”

“He wouldn’t be happy.” Devan strode to the bed and fell down

across it, rolling over on the pliant mattress with a lighthearted sigh.
He looked up at Allen, smiling. “He’d probably punish me terribly.”

Allen said, drily, “Good for you, then.”
Devan patted the bed beside him, and Allen joined him there. By

the time he sat down Devan was already unbuttoning his shirt. It
seemed strange to just sit there while the other man undressed
himself, so Allen reached out, pushed Devan’s hands away, and took
over the job.

Naked, Devan was clearly mature for a fancy boy, but he’d kept

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very fit. His breath shuddered as Allen pressed him back against
the mattress, reaching for the cords. A take-charge attitude seemed
to be in order here, so he tried not to reveal his own inexperience.
The cord was silky, thin but strong, with just a little give to it. Allen
found he liked the feel of it sliding through his hands, the look of
it wrapped around Devan’s wrists, pressing valleys in his smooth
skin. Allen knotted Devan’s hands together and tied them above

his head, then slipped down his body, separating and spreading
his legs. He roped the ankles to opposite bedposts, fingers slipping

in distraction as he looked up over Devan’s body, visibly quivering

in anticipation.

“So...” He realized he was still dressed, but didn’t move to

remedy the fact. Devan’s nakedness made such an inviting contrast.

Allen wanted to... His mouth went dry at the possibilities.

“What am I allowed to do with you?” he asked the man bound

below him, and the words themselves charged nerves, sent
sympathetic muscles trembling.

Devan looked up at him with a hazy smile. “Anything you

want.”

Allen studied him. Devan was achingly erect now, and with his

limbs tied and any initiative, by his own admission, given over
wholly to his partner, it was up to Allen to do something about

that. If he chose.

He knelt between Devan’s legs slowly, as if considering it. He

licked one finger and ran the moistened tip along Devan’s cock. Then
his hands wrapped around the base—lightly, just enough to guide
it to his mouth. He was about to take it in deep when he stopped—
this did take some thought—and instead, he only wrapped his lips
around the head. Below him Devan’s hips jerked, trying to reach

farther, but Allen kept himself barely within reach. His tongue traced
a ring around Devan’s cock, slipped back and forth over the glans,
then withdrew. He opened his mouth so that it hovered over Devan’s
flesh, only his damp, hot breath touching him.

Allen kept it up, teasing, licking, breathing, brushing kisses.

Devan strained at the ropes, hips thrusting. The movement became

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

34

distracting, so Allen tried to pin his pelvis down to the mattress,
fingers biting into the spare flesh there, holding him entirely
immobile.

“Yes,” Devan said, the first and last coherent thing he said for

some time.

Complete helplessness brought him very close to the edge, but

still Allen continued the barely-there blowjob, pleasuring but not
satisfying him. His own arousal was beginning to press at his fly,
allowing him to sympathize with Devan’s frustration. Not that he
was about to take pity on him. He wanted to see what they could

accomplish with just some restraints and his mouth and the tip of
Devan’s cock.

He grazed his teeth over the head, and that was what did it.

He sat back as Devan came, utterly wanton, binding cords pulled
taut and white drops of come splattered over his abdomen.

“You should get cleaned up,” Allen observed just as it seemed

Devan’s composure was returning.

“Are you going to help me?” he asked in a whisper. And there,

the composure had fled again. He was undone, in Allen’s power
and loving it.

“Of course I will.” He freed Devan’s legs and then unhooked

the cord binding his hands from the headboard, though he didn’t
release them. He walked Devan back to the bathroom, half-
supporting him, brought him into the shower, and looped the
cord over the showerhead. It was low enough that Devan could
get his feet back under him, although in fact he was probably
relying on the added support.

“All right?” Allen asked.
Devan nodded, swallowing breathlessly.
Allen stepped out of the shower and undressed, kicking the

discarded clothing aside. He came back in and stood behind
Devan, his hardening member grazing the back of the man’s thigh.
They both shuddered at the contact, but he stepped away. First, he
turned on the warm water and began to wash Devan’s body,
soaping over its planes and rinsing away the mess almost tenderly.

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

Then his cleaning became more thorough, touching every fold
and crevice. He separated Devan’s buttocks and slipped a soap-slick
finger around his hole, then inside it.

Devan moaned. He was hot and tight, and by the time Allen

took his hand away he was clean, too, shaking in his bonds. Allen
knelt and replaced his fingers with his tongue.

He had to grab Devan’s hips to hold him still again. Running

his tongue around the rim, he tasted salt and soap and drops of
soft shower water. He pressed inwards with rapid, shallow flicks,
teasing again. He wondered if Devan’s Master had ever tried this,
and laughed inwardly at the thought. Probably not, and so he had
no idea what he was missing out on, how he could make this

man beg.

Allen drew back. “You have to ask for it nicely, Devan.”
“Yes...” He pulled in a breath. Allen suddenly regretted placing

any conditions; no matter how enjoyable the show of power had
been, it was holding him back from what he really wanted.

“Please,” Devan said.
Allen stood, wrapping one arm around Devan’s waist while the

other hand guided them together. He started with slow, deep
thrusts, but his discipline didn’t last long. Soon he was driving into

him, the south of flesh on flesh and their combined moans and

gasps rising above the cascading water. Devan threw his head back
while Allen pressed his face to his neck, delivering something
between a kiss and a bite. He came like a flash of lightening, hot
and fast and blinding. For a moment he just drifted, Devan in his
arms, a warm glow spreading through him as the shower cooled.

Devan shifted, bringing Allen’s attention back to their still-

joined bodies. He slowly separated and rinsed them both off, then
stopped the water and undid the knots in the cord, which
thankfully hadn’t swollen when wet. Though speaking of swollen...

he rubbed at Devan’s hands, restoring their circulation.

“You okay?” he asked.
Devan leaned against his shoulder, but nodded. “Perfectly.

Thank you. That was...” He grinned and his lethargy vanished,

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

36

replaced with something sharper. His voice was heavy with desire as
he said, “We should do that again sometime.”

“Maybe,” Allen said.
Devan’s body arched against his, pressing, and he amended that

to, “Yes, we should.”

They toweled off their bodies and dressed in a silence that seemed

tense, anticipatory. Devan was still smiling. A shiver ran down Allen’s
spine, and he wasn’t sure if it came from an echo of lust or some

unconscious warning. Messing around with someone else’s fancy
boy without permission could be dangerous; maybe that was it.

“I should go,” he said.
“I’ll walk you down,” Devan offered.
Allen couldn’t really refuse, but before they went out the door

he gripped the long, pale hair at the nape of Devan’s neck and pulled
him close, crushing their lips together in the farewell kiss they
wouldn’t be able to exchange in public. It wiped the smile from

Devan’s face, and his breathing was unsteady in the elevator on the
way down.

As Allen stepped out, he saw a familiar figure leaning against one

of the pillars in the lobby—the woman who had been walking next
door. Her lover/amateur photographer stood beside her, his gaze
going from Allen to Devan Lamott.

The man bowed, the formal gesture of respect to one’s Master.
The woman, on the other hand, was looking at Allen. Smiling,

she stepped up to him and offered the camera with one of her photos
on the display screen.

Allen looked more closely at it, his stomach knotting. The woman

posed, sitting on the ledge surrounding the rooftop garden, the
apartment building rising behind her. His fingers pressed out the
familiar signals to the image modifier, magnifying the window over

her right shoulder. Those vast, transparent walls showed him kneeling
over a bound, naked Devan Lamott, sucking his cock.

“I’d frame it,” the man said blithely.
It was never safe to strike a bondsman; there was always the risk

of his Master avenging him. But Allen considered it anyway.

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

Devan—if that was his name—put a hand on Allen’s shoulder.

“You see,” he said, “they’re more powerful than most people
realize—the cameras, I mean.”

“Photographers too,” the woman said. She smiled at Devan.

“What about it? You seem to enjoy wielding power in—”

“Helen,” Devan said sharply. She fell silent, giving him an

apologetic nod—and then mirroring the gesture, to the same humble
degree, with Allen.

“I doubt I have a hope of Contracting you, even now,” Devan said

to him. “But this record’s existence might... convince you of the
potential for cooperation between us. There are many Masters in this
city with a distaste for this sort of thing—several of your principle
customers among them. And should you ever need the assistance of
a Charity, you’ll have to seek it at the Unitarian Mission or some such

overcrowded organization.”

“You can’t make me an outcast without publishing those

pictures,” Allen said. “And that means revealing your own secrets,
too.”

Devan’s eyes sparked. “Ah, but I’m a Master. I can afford a little

controversy.”

“And now you think you can afford me?”
“Only a little of your time, the non-exclusive use of your talents,

some privileges regarding the supervision of your portfolio. I can
even reimburse you, if you wish. Don’t worry, Allen, I won’t
command your obedience.”

“No,” Allen said, “that’s not what you have a taste for.”
Devan began to laugh, but Allen cut him off, stepping close to

murmur in his ear.

“I’ll make you pay for this,” he promised.
Devan shivered, and a soft flush deepened the color of his cheek.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said.

Allen sighed, looking down at the picture. At the image of Devan,

bound and pleading, completely in his power. His stomach flipped
again, but this time with a warmer form of tension. He smiled
ruefully. “So am I.”

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38

He’s been trained to wake silently and lie still, wherever he wakes.
Eyes closed, he listens first. The smell of disinfectant and the hum
and beep of machines tell him he’s in hospital. He inventories his
body and finds it free from pain, with the slight tug of a needle in
his left arm. There’s no sound of human breath or movement, so
he opens his eyes.

The arms above the white sheet are slender and hairless, the

hands narrow with nails cut into egg-shapes. As he wriggles his
fingers he hopes it’s just the fashion these days and he hasn’t come
back as a queer.

He flexes his toes, and when his eyes flick to the moving lumps

at the foot of the bed he catches sight of the lumps further up. He
reaches down with his new hands and touches, unmistakably,
breasts—he knows a thing or two about breasts—which unmis-
takably belong to him.

The effect this has on his breathing and heart rate sets off a

monitor, which brings a man with a grey suit and shrewd eyes.
Recognising a handler when he sees one, he sits up.

“Hello, Mark.” The grey man gives a pleased, wolfish grin.

“Welcome to the year 2152.”

t

He remembers the clean soap-and-shampoo smell of the woman
they sent to interview him. Her short brown hair, her astonishing
youthfulness and her ridiculous job title, military neuropsychologist. The
electric hairnet thing across his scalp. Her fingertips brushing his
nipple as she pressed the sticky pads onto his chest.

‘File’ used to mean a thick loose-leaf dossier bound in beige

cardboard, stamped on the cover, full of typed and photocopied
docoments. Now his file is an icon on a computer screen.

Sleeper Agent

A.J. Viggen

It’s the most thorough debriefing of his life, because it is his

life. The questions skip from his childhood to his recent retirement
and back again. He loses his virginity, loses his parents, graduates
from Oxford into the arms of the Secret Service. Over three days
he lists the countries he’s visited and the deeds he did there; the
meals he ate, the men he killed, the women he bedded. He finds
himself wanting to shock her, but the freckled cheeks never blush
and the delightful mouth refuses to smile for him.

Meanwhile the sensors and electrodes send their feedback to

her tablet, the microphone converts his words to a scrolling
monochrome transcript on the screen, and the tiny flash drive
records it all against the day when technology will find a way to
put these memories, this mind in another body, and his country
needs him again. All TS, top secret, of course. Experimental. Ex-
pensive.

“Why me?” he asks.
“Because you’re the last, Mark. The last one left who had the

education, the training, the experience in the field, before all the
walls came down.”

Old school, she means. An agent from the days when espionage

was nation spying upon nation, not a bunch of grubby little ter-
rorists blowing themselves up.

“I’m a dinosaur, in other words.”
“More like a tiger. Dangerous, valuable, and nearly extinct.”
Very nearly extinct, the cancer already chewing away at his in-

nards. Although he recalls how it felt to be ill and in pain, he
knows nothing of his eventual end. His memories stop dead with
the final tap of a finger on a touchscreen. There’s a vivid recollec-
tion of wanting to screw the young scientist, and he wonders
whether he did—one last, glorious fuck—or if she brushed him
off with a kind word and a pitying look.

The last. He’d been hoping she’d say the best.

t

Tim, his grey wolf of a handler, briefs him while he looks around

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40

the room. Machines are smaller, more organic-looking. There’s
little traffic noise, suggesting that the hospital is in some remote,
secret spot—or is it that cars are rarer now?

“Your name is Angela Wing. You work as a research assistant at

a laboratory in Scotland. One of its functions is to create
bioweapons, plagues. A leaked docoment leads us to believe that
the lab has developed a virus which will wipe out approximately
three in every five people—and that the high-ups plan to release
it. With the climate change and the increasing population, the
scientists have come to believe it’s the only way.” Tim’s delivery is
flat and calm.

“Why can’t you just close the place down?”
“Because the British Government no longer has any

jurisdiction in Scotland. It’s a foreign country now—and it’s
hostile. They’re going to wait behind their wall while three-fifths
of the English and Welsh die off.”

Tim’s eyes keep wandering lazily to Mark’s bare chest. Suddenly

realising, he yanks the sheet up over his breasts and feels himself
blush. He remembers a woman officer towards the end of his
career who informed him that sexist attitudes like his were dying
out in the Service. Ha! Silly cow.

“When Wing was involved in a car smash and brain-damaged

it was a godsend,” Tim continues. “A contact in the police tipped
us off and she was whisked into ‘private care’. We’ve had the tech
to bring you back for some time now; at last we had the motive
and the opportunity.”

“Blow the whole lot up,” Mark suggests, but half-heartedly. He

wants this mission, this challenge.

“With what? Nobody has an air force or an army any more.

Time for some good old-fashioned cloak-and-dagger. We’ll get you
in but it’s up to you to pass yourself off as Wing, find out where
they’re keeping this stuff and bring us a sample. Then we can create
an antidote and get the population inoculated.

“It won’t be easy—the virus will be locked away, closely

guarded. A lowly tech like you won’t be left alone with it unless

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you’ve got a damn good reason. You might even have to sleep with
someone.” Wolf-grin. “Think you can manage that?”

t

They give him a fortnight to familiarise himself with the world of
2152 and his part in it. He memorises the layout of the Scottish
complex and the faces of Angela’s colleagues, grainy stills captured
from the now-ubiquitous CCTV cameras.

There’s CCTV footage of Angela herself, from which he learns

her facial expressions, her brisk, bouncy walk, and her habit of

flicking her straight black hair out of her eyes with the middle
finger of her right hand. He learns how to dress himself. Getting
used to the fashion of the time is no harder than wearing woman’s

clothes would have been for him before; in fact things are easier
now than they would have been back in the day. Tights have gone
out of style, while bras are now a single band of translucent,

stretchy fabric that fasten with the stroke of a finger.

Lib Schafter, the officer who’s been assigned to bring him up

to date on the new political and geographical landscapes, must
need a heavy-duty bra, perhaps with a double layer of the elastic
stuff, but he makes himself ignore that and pay attention. One
slip—an unguarded reference to the Royal Family rather than the
President, for instance—would doom not only himself but sixty
percent of the population.

He’s been moved from the hospital wing, but he doesn’t roam

far and goes nowhere without Tim or another member of his team.
Security on this operation is tight. He can’t see much from the

window of his room; a few new houses in a foreign-looking style,
with sharply-pointed roofs, and a canal. He’s been told he’s in

Northumberland, but it looks nothing like the place glimpsed
from the motorway on childhood holidays. Water has risen, taken
much of the coastline, then been tamed by dikes and channels.
Mountains have been razed to build up the land and snatch it back
from the sea’s embrace.

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42

During his short hours of rest, he gets to know Angela’s body.

After all, she won’t be using it again. He coils the straight flat hair
around his fingers, explores his small nose, strokes his eyelids and
the plucked and shaped brows. Strangely, the inside of his mouth
is hardest to get used to. It’s so healthy—no fillings, no nicotine
residue.

Angela Wing is twenty-eight, her figure and muscles toned

from her hobbies—tennis and karate. Her hair and face are from
her mother while her above-average height comes from her father
(both now deceased). Mark, lying on his back, places his hands
on his breasts and squeezes gently. When his thumbs pass across
the nipples they harden. He taps and flicks with his forefingers for
a while, then transfers the right-hand finger to his mouth, licks
the tip, and moves it between his legs.

He parts the dry folds of labia and locates the warm little nub.

When he touches it, the pit of his stomach and the insides of his
thighs seem to flutter while the spot where his finger rests feels
like ice. He tries a forward and back motion first, then small circles,
increasing the pressure of his finger against his clitoris.

Knees up, he slides his finger further back and into the hole

while his left hand cups his breast. With every forward-and-back
thrust of his finger, he clenches and unclenches his buttocks. He
strokes faster, and finds space for a second finger in the warm, wet
corridor. He can feel that he’s reaching orgasm and he pursues it
as he’d tail an enemy agent: now following closely, now dropping
back to allay any suspicions. The final, successful capture comes in
warm ripples that spread outwards from his loins.

When he’s finished he falls asleep with his hand still clasped

between his thighs, like a child holding a teddy bear against the
terrors of a dark bedroom. The next morning, they take him to
Scotland.

He travels in the back of an ambulance, snug in a stretcher

made from some kind of foam that moulds itself to him. The
interior of the ambulance is completely noise and vibration-proof,
so he doesn’t experience the anticipated halt at the border. Nor

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does he see the high fence that marks the vast research complex,
or the miles of flat parkland within it.

Mandy, the ambulance driver, leaves him at the gatehouse. She

wishes him goodbye and good luck, tells him to ring Dr. West—
code for Tim—if he has any questions or problems, and leaves
him. The security guard keeps his gun trained on the ambulance
until it’s out of sight.

“Welcome back,” he says, holstering the weapon. “I was sorry

to hear about your accident.” He’s scanning Mark’s retina and
fingerprints as he speaks. “There! You haven’t been replaced with
a robot after all! On you go, love.”

Mark knows that to leave the complex is very unusual. Angela

was accompanying one of the directors to a conference when their
car was struck by another vehicle—a chance in a thousand, these
days, with fewer cars and advanced AI in the ones that do run. The
director and driver were killed and Angela was rushed by helihover

to an English hospital, Tim’s hospital, before the complex could
claim her and tuck her away in its own sanatorium.

Working from the map he’s memorised, Mark walks to Angela’s

block, staying off the travelators to spin out the journey. There are
signs to restaurants, bars and one of the two 3D cinemas;
elsewhere, he knows, are crèche, school, pan-denominational
place of worship.

He glances casually about him at emergency exits, cleaners’

cupboards and windows onto the inner courtyard garden,
thinking about escape routes, hiding-places and disguises. He gets
a few smiles on the way, but nobody stops to talk. His first
challenge comes when he’s found Angela’s neat little room,
unpacked, and prowled off to the floor’s communal kitchen in
search of coffee.

When he gets there it’s occupied by a woman of around sixty,

with hair the colour of iron filings. Intelligent eyes and good
cheekbones keep her face young. He smiles to buy time while he
sorts through the profiles he’s memorised.

“Angela! Good to see you—how are you feeling? Tea?”

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

44

Got her. Joan Waites, project lead, his neighbour and line

manager.

He’s about to ask for coffee, remembers just in time that tea is

Angela’s poison. “Please. White, no sugar.” Does he sound too curt

for Angela?

“I do remember, Ange! It’s only been a month!”
Make that neighbour, line manager and friend. Mark needs to

tread carefully. Dig for information without attracting suspicion.
He’s always despised gossip; time to make it work for him.

“So, what’s been going on?” he asks, taking the insulated mug.

Remembering a secretary of his, he adds “What’s the goss?”

Fifteen minutes later his tea has gone cold and he has a wealth

of new information to digest. Petty rivalries, fallings-out, one
engagement, two breakups and a pregnancy. He hopes he’s given
the right response to everything. On the surface none of it is useful,
but he’s getting a picture of his colleagues—especially Joan—that
he couldn’t glean from the files.

Pleading tiredness, he returns to his cubicle and bed. He goes

back through his conversation with Joan, sifting again for any
significant news items, but instead finds himself focusing on the dry
humour in her gravelly voice and the smile in her brown eyes. If only
she was thirty years younger, he thinks, before remembering the other,
larger obstacle of his sex. When he falls asleep with his hand
between his thighs, his mind is on Joan rather than any of the
women from his past. But since coming back he hasn’t liked to think
about the people he once knew, all as dead now as his own body—
which, he realises, was about Joan’s age.

Bluffing his way through his first day as a research assistant leaves

him exhausted, but he makes no errors—at least, none that elicit
comment. His job involves little more than fetching this, holding

that and making notes on the other; if he’s sometimes a little hesitant
or slow, Joan and the others blame it on his absence. Lucas Black,
the director of Angela’s group, even tells him not to worry his pretty
little head about it when he picks the wrong test tube from a rack.

Behind Lucas’s back, Joan’s expression is of amused sympathy.

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He’s identified the room containing the virus from the respect

with which everyone treats it. There are code cards, retina scans
and a lengthy procedure of mask, goggles and gloves. Now to
select his target, the person who will get him into the lab. It must
be either Joan or Lucas, he decides. His—no, Angela’s—friendship
with Joan would make her the obvious choice, but Lucas’s vanity,
patronising attitude and terrible ties—he’s the only man in the
place who still wears one, though they’re popular with women
now—make Mark long to trick him and puncture that confidence.

He takes another day to wait and observe. He laughs at Lucas’s

jokes and stands close beside him, sometimes accidentally
brushing his long-fingered hand against Lucas’s arm or flicking
his hair in the Director’s face. He’s using Angela’s perfume and
makeup, but not overdoing it, the way Lib showed him during his
training.

His colleagues, naturally, accept him as Angela—at work, in the

canteen and in the women’s loos. He’s never really had female
friends; now he finds himself surrounded by friendly, chatty
company. It would be rather pleasant if it wasn’t for the strain of
keeping his cover in place.

He’s used different identities before: false passports, the

appearance and age close enough to his own to slip past Customs
in pre-scan days. Never that childish business of wigs and false
noses—not until now and this bone-deep façade.

Back in the Cold War, sleeper agents were placed in hostile or

potentially hostile territory and left to grow roots. Some became
so wedded to their false lives that they almost forgot about their
former selves. When the call came, some of them refused to betray
their adopted home for a native land whose memory had become
hazy. But nobody, not even the sleepers who stayed in place for
decades, has ever assumed a cover as deep as the one Mark has
acquired in the space of a couple of weeks.

His own emotions surprise him: the blushes that heat his

cheeks, the squirts of adrenaline when Lucas raises his voice.
Sometimes, usually when he’s thinking about his past life, he feels

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

46

tears trying to start and has to bite his lip with his alien little teeth.

It’s not surprising that on the day he plans to spring his

honeytrap, using Lucas to get at the virus, he’s particularly keyed
up. There are tears at the back of his eyes and a throb in the pit of
his stomach, but he ignores it all as he showers, towels briskly
enough to make his skin sing, carefully shaves his legs, armpits

and what was once called the bikini line with an infrared razor. As

he tests the cool, smooth flesh with his fingers, he offers an
apology to Angela for the use he’ll soon be making of her body.

He slips into the dress he’s chosen: short and lightweight in a

fabric that feels like linen, but with a shimmer to it. It’s the sort of
thing that would have appealed to him, once, but is it right for
this age? He wishes he could ask Joan her opinion—Joan? He
means Lib, of course. Careless of her not to advise on seduction-
wear.

When he’s pulled on Angela’s shoes he wonders if he’s wearing

them right, such is the pain from the high heels and narrow instep,
but a glance in the mirror assures him that they look perfect. He
twirls sideways to admire himself in profile, twists his ankle and
collapses on the floor.

Limping slightly, he makes his way to the fifth-floor corridor

and pays a final visit to the Ladies’ a couple of doors down from
Lucas’s office. When he pulls down Angela’s smallest, laciest pants,
he discovers that he won’t be seducing anyone today.

Why did nobody think to warn him? And why, why didn’t Lib

brief him on this, he wonders bitterly as he dithers in the
pharmacy, trying to decide, without appearing too conspicuous,
what to buy and how much of it he might need. At last he has a
brainwave and returns to his room, which he ransacks in search
of supplies. Sure enough, Angela kept a stash, and he’s able to
experiment in private with twenty-second century sanitary
products until he comes to a satisfactory arrangement.

The waiting is agony; every day increases the chance of a slip

and discovery, or the release of the virus. One night Joan invites
him to the cinema and he accepts, scared of blowing his cover but

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unable to face another evening of pacing around his room. He’s
seen the film before, but now it’s been converted to 3D, the long-
dead actors looking real enough to touch and the explosions
kicking off all around him.

Sitting in the dark, he glances sideways at Joan’s profile and her

wonderful cheekbones as she laughs. When she looks back at him
he shifts his own gaze to the front, and their conversation as they
walk back to their block together is limited to discussion of the
movie.

“I love those old spy films,” Joan confesses, “but they look so

silly now.”

Mark agrees solemnly.
Back in his room, he hooks Angela’s phone behind his ear and

tells it to call the number he’s been given. Vibrations through the
bones of his jaw let him hear and speak. The device is smaller than
an old-style radio bug, but it’s still an unsecured line and the old
protocols still hold.

“Dr West? It’s Angela Wing.”
“Angela! How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been having a few headaches.”
“Have you been taking your medicine?”
“No, I’ve been too busy catching up at work.”
“Angela, you need to take that medicine as soon as possible,

OK?”

“Thank you, Doctor. I will.”
Tim couldn’t be more clear: time is running out for Mark to

‘take’ the ‘medicine’. He smiles, enjoying the game, and Angela’s
pulse beats faster. Calm down, dear, he tells himself, you’ll give us away.

The next day he’s ready, both physically and otherwise. When

they break for lunch, he brings Lucas a coffee without being asked.
The Director is wearing an especially garish tie, Mark notices:
orange with green pinstriping. He allows the backs of their hands
to touch as he sets the mug down. He leans forward, the neckline
of the shimmery dress revealing the little line of freckles that
march down Angela’s cleavage.

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48

“How are you getting on now, Angela?” Lucas asks. “You seem,

er, much better.”

“Oh, a hundred and twenty percent,” Mark assures him. “But

I’m still having trouble catching up with everything I’ve missed. I
know I must be really stupid, but...”

“Oh, no, no, no,” says Lucas. “You just need a little help to get

on top of things again.” Their eyes meet and they smile at each
other, speaking in the same code. “Perhaps I could give you a one-
to-one this afternoon.”

“I’d like that,” Mark lies, and they both stand up. But when

they reach the door of Lucas’s office, he puts his hand on the
Director’s hip.

“Wouldn’t you rather go somewhere you won’t be disturbed?”
Lucas pauses, hand on the door. “Where did you have in

mind?”

“Laboratory 12.”
It’s the virus lab. Mark sees surprise flicker across Lucas’s face,

then a frown as he considers the risks. Mark’s hand slides to the
Director’s waist and down; there’s already a slight bulge at his

crotch. Got him, thinks Mark. Fucking in a danger zone; the power-
fetish types always go for that.

He’s crazy with impatience, now the thing is within his grasp,

but that’s all right: his eagerness will flatter the Director’s ego.
Angela’s high heels click along beside Lucas, never stumbling. Go
on, get it over with, get the stuff, get out!

Lucas is gazing into the retina scanner, his pass poised to swipe

across the reader, when Joan arrives.

“Ah, Angela, there you are! Had you forgotten you were

helping me out this afternoon?”

Before Mark can protest, Joan has swept him off down the

corridor. The lab door unbolts for Lucas, who kicks it closed again.

Instead of Joan’s office, she takes him to the kitchen in their

accommodation block, switches the kettle on, and folds her arms.

“Aren’t you going to thank me for delivering you from the

clutches of Lucas?” There’s a chuckle in her voice, and one eyebrow

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

is raised. He notices how they’ve stayed dark while her hair has
turned grey.

She’s ruined his chance, doomed two-thirds of Britain. Mark

should be furious—but he feels relief flooding through him now
he won’t have to go through with his plan. He’ll get another
opportunity—he’ll make one. It’s what he does, why they brought
him back. Meanwhile...

“Well?” Joan says.
He puts one hand on her waist, the other to the back of her

head, and he kisses her.

She gives a surprised, reflexive jerk back before leaning in to

him and touching her lips to his. He runs his thumb along the
line at the base of her neck where the hair is cropped close and
down her jaw, taking her chin between thumb and index finger.
Her arms wind around his back and press him gently just above
the curve of his bottom, pushing his hips towards hers.

“I never thought you were interested,” she says, pulling away

and studying his eyes.

“Maybe I’ve seen the light.” This is where he should pick her

up and carry her to bed, but Angela’s body, toned though it is, isn’t
up to the task. So he takes her hand and they drag each other to
Joan’s room, which is a larger, executive suite, and throw
themselves onto the single bed. Two pairs of shoes hit the floor in
a quick series of thumps.

Before he can work out what’s supposed to happen next he’s

climbed on top of her. His hair brushes her breasts and he thrusts
his groin down against hers. When they touch it sets off the tingle
in his loins and he presses harder, grinding up and down her pubic
bone. Now he’s started, he can’t seem to stop. After a few slow
strokes he builds up speed until his quick, firm nudges bring him
to orgasm. Then longer and more leisurely on the way back down.
He sits up, shuddering, hands on her ribcage below the bosom.

“Sorry!” he gasps, flicking back his hair in Angela’s gesture and

squeezing Joan’s chest with his thighs. “Selfish of me! Can I do
anything—”

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

50

She shows him. Pulling him down beside her, she guides his

finger to her clitoris. He uses the same movements and patterns
he’s learned on himself; he’s done this to a woman before, of
course, but never from a position of such experience.

Joan squeaks and wriggles at first, then thrashes her legs so that

he has to concentrate hard to keep his finger in the right place. He
wraps his own leg around her knees, locks his free arm around

her neck and kisses her, pushing her head back into the pillow.
Now he can make progress—transferring his thumb to where his
finger was and his fingers inside her. She twitches under his weight

and moans into his mouth, at one point managing to bite his lip,
but he holds her still until she jerks as if galvanised and pulls her
mouth away, gasping.

He withdraws his hand; she takes it and licks his fingers clean,

working them all the way into her mouth and biting gently below
his knuckles. Then she just holds his hand against her left breast,
over her racing heart.

“Thank you... Mark,” she says.
He knows straight away that there’s no point trying to bluff;

she wouldn’t make a move like that without solid evidence. Just find
out how much she knows and hope you don’t have to kill her.

“How did you know?” he asks, turning his hand over to grip

hers.

“Five years ago, there was a break-in at the Cambridge archive

and your file was taken,” she tells him. “We were waiting for
something of this sort to happen. I don’t know what you’ve been
told, but you’ve been working for a powerful terrorist group.”

“You’re with the Service?” Tim, or whatever your name is, you’re a bastard

and I’m going to kill you.

She nods. “I’m not really a Project Manager, thank God! I was

put in place about a year ago, when we suspected this facility
would be the target. Angela’s car accident was too convenient, and
I’ve been testing you out since you arrived. For your information,
I don’t think anyone has said what’s the goss for a few decades! But I
wasn’t quite sure enough until I happened to walk past and see
you about to go into the lab with Lucas.”

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

He’s visibly smug at this news. “Rather out of character, eh?”
“For Angela. Not for you. Ditto everything that happened

subsequently,” she adds, that delightful chuckle back in her voice.
“Which, I might add, was out of character for me too.”

“I’m sure it was,” he says. He’s outwardly relaxed, but

underneath he’s picking away at her story, comparing it with Tim’s,
sifting for the truth. Part of him hates that she’s in control while
he’s floundering in a strange world which has just become even
stranger. “So there is a virus?”

“There is. It’s measles. The disease was eradicated after

you...thirty years ago,”—she’s avoiding the phrase ‘after you died’,
and he’s grateful—”and the last stocks are kept here. You can

imagine what it would do to an unvaccinated population.”

“But the Scottish government isn’t planning to use it against

England and Wales?”

“Not that I know of!” She doesn’t react to ‘the Scottish

government’, so that part must be true. Hide the big lie among
the improbable truths. “And if it was, don’t you think this place
would be in Scotland?” She looks sharply at him. “What?”

“We’re not in Scotland?”
“Holland,” she says simply.
The dikes. The canals. The strange architecture. Stupid, stupid,

stupid. He buries his face in her neck with a groan.

“So, no climate change?” he asks at last.
“Some. But it wouldn’t have had such a radical effect in forty

years.”

“You mean a hundred and forty.”
She frowns. “Didn’t you know? The world calendar starts with

the birth of Julius Caesar now—100 BC, to you.”

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits, head in

hands. She rests her fingertips on the base of his spine.

“I’ve contradicted a lot of what you’ve been told,” she says

quietly, “and you’ve got no way of knowing who’s telling the
truth. But I’ll do whatever it takes to convince you—take you to
London, if you like. Real London! It’s not flooded! Big Ben’s still
there!” He grudgingly returns her smile. “This could be our best

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

52

chance of smashing that terrorist cell, if you’re willing to play dou-
ble agent. And I don’t mind admitting I want them destroyed for
killing Angela.”

He believes her, both logically and instinctively. Everything

she’s telling him comes naturally, with no pauses; Lib Schafter’s
lectures were prepared.

“No—I can tell you’re being honest. I have an instinct for these

things.” He tousles her hair. “You know that—you must have read
my file.”

“I’ve done a little more than that, Mark. I’m afraid I haven’t

been entirely honest yet. You see, I was given this assignment for
two reasons. One: I’m a military neuropsychologist.” She waits for
this to sink in, and nods. “Two: I’m that military neuropsychologist.
I said I knew it was you when I saw you with Lucas, but in fact I
wasn’t completely sure until you kissed me.”

“Did I talk that much about kissing when you interviewed

me?” he asks.

“Oh! I keep forgetting you can’t remember anything that

happened afterwards.”

“Why, what did?” He has a pretty good idea, and he slides his

arm around her waist.

“Am I going to have to go through that all over again?”
“Looks like it.”
“The things I do for my country.”
As he pulls her back down beside him, the future seems less

bleak.

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

“Othello Nicholas Top, known as ON to his friends, the Minister
of War with the New Confederacy,” J was saying, “will be
vacationing in Vail, Colorado this weekend. Your mission, L12 and
Double-D7, is to attend one of his many parties and take the
nuclear launch codes the Confederacy had acquired when it ceded
from the USA.”

Agent L12, Jack Charge, opened the file J had sent him by

blinking. The iEye implanted computer popped the text up in his
left eye’s vision and Jack skimmed it. “I suppose you want me to
seduce this ON Top.”

J nodded. “Considering your...enhancements, yes, L12, that’s

what Management had in mind.”

“And DD7?” Jack asked, pointing to the buxom blonde whose

breasts were barely contained by her black halter top.

“Double-D 7 will be there for backup.”
“Pardon,” DD7 said in her Southern accent, “but with the

Confederacy’s sexual restrictions, why on Earth are you sending
him in as the First?”

“Ah!” J said in a rising pitch. He pushed up his glasses. “Yes,

that. We have reliable sources that ON’s marriage is nothing but
show. He has at least one mistress on the side. But more
importantly for us, we are confident that he’s a closeted bisexual,
and that currently he has no male lovers.”

“So Management thinks he’s craving cock now, is it?” Jack

asked.

“That’s the thinking, yes.”
“Sounds like a rather simplistic view of sexuality,” DD7 said.
Jack nodded. He looked over the file some more. They’d be

leaving tomorrow, posing as a couple of military investors, rich
enough to matter but not so rich that people would wonder why

Jasmine Always Wins

Shawn Erin

they’re unknown. “Do I get any other cool toys? Any cars,
exploding pens, anything?”

J looked at him like a serious parent admonishing a child.

“Jack, don’t you think your enhancements are toys enough?” His
tone screamed: rhetorical question.

Jack grinned. “Can’t a guy have fun?”
J sighed. “Not when the Ameri...Union taxpayer is footing

the bill.”

Jack shrugged. As far as he was concerned, he’d always be in

America; the New Confederacy was something else.

“L12, we should de-brief in my room,” DD7 said.
Jack’s grin widened. “We done here?” he asked J.
The man ran fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Yes, I

suppose everything else is covered in the file.”

Jack could almost feel a little sorry for the man. J was part of a

time when they needed an actual person to deliver the mission

and tech.

“Lead the way, Molly,” he told the buxom agent.
Her lecherous grin softened somewhat. She didn’t like her

name that much.

In the elevator she said, “There’s a reason I wanted to fuck ON”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Oh...?”
“Jesus, Jack, don’t you read the file they give you?”
Jack hastily searched the file, giving the iEye implanted in his

brain mental commands. He found what she must be talking
about, then gave another “Oh...”

In DD7’s apartment now, she promptly uncaged her glorious

breasts from their halter top prison, then removed her black skirt.
She was underwearless, as usual. The scent of jasmine filled the air
as her body pumped the scented pheromones out of sweat glands.
Jack stood there admiring her equally glorious ass, feeling his cock

strain in his pants.

DD7 sauntered over to Jack and grabbed his crotch, massaging

his wood. “I’m gonna release this bad boy.”

Jack groaned as she unzipped him and began working her

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

hand over the shaft. Her right hand was frantically finger-bating
her pussy. As usual with Molly: no foreplay.

“I don’t know which is worse,” she said. “Being so horny I’ll

fuck anything now. Or, before they changed us, wanting to be so
horny that I would want to fuck anything.”

Jack managed to say between grunts: “Why is that a bad

thing?”

Molly shook her head. “Typical guy response.” Then any pos-

sible rebuttal was silenced when she attacked his cock, easily swal-
lowing all twelve inches. Lessening the gag reflect, just another
one of the many subtle enhancements they both had.

Molly’s entrance into the world of spy-craft seemed voluntary.

For Jack, it was anything but. After fucking every slutty boy and girl
in high school, he moved to California to become a porn star. He
had the credentials: a large penis (ten inches at the time), he could
last longer than two minutes before he came, and he was reasonably
attractive. Then the spooks came and recruited him to work for the
“Agency.” After some radical plastic surgery, just in case any of his
targets might be porn aficionados; growing his dick by a couple
inches; and gene therapy to activate dormant genes that produce
human pheromones and increase libido, he became Jack Charge, spy

extraordinaire. But in reality he knew that Molly was the real spy,
watching over him like a dutiful chaperone.

Molly stood, looking into his eyes. She was just a tad shorter than

he. They kissed briefly, heavily, her fingers messing up his brown hair.
Their lips parted, and she grabbed his hand lightly and guided him
to the couch. Human musk, now thick in the air, gave off its strange
jasmine scent.

With one leg on the floor and the other between her legs as she

lay on the couch, Jack’s cock went easily into her willing, tight cunt.
It felt like the orifice was sucking it in. Jack often wondered if that
was the result of more genetic tinkering or pelvic floor exercises.

DD7 was moaning loudly now, rubbing her tits, and rolling her

eyes. Jack thought about mundane things to keep from blowing his
load, an old porn star trick.

Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

56

“God-damn, mother-fucker!” she screamed, arching her back.

Jack felt wetness around his cock. DD7 was a mild squirter. When
she was done they disconnected and she stood. Jack sat on the
couch and she sat on his cock, her hands placed on his rock-hard
abs for support. Those he got from the gym, not gene tinkering.

As she bounced up-and-down, moaning, she said, “Would you

believe that I almost got married once?” But she didn’t wait for a
response. “Could you believe it? Fucking one person for the rest
of your life?”

But Jack was barely listening. With Molly bouncing rapidly on

his cock, even macabre images of death weren’t enough of a
distraction to hold back the warmth of orgasm. He groaned out
his climax as Molly came again. Afterward, disengaged, they lay

next to each other, petting each other more out of boredom than

sexual pleasure. This was how most of their “debriefing” sessions
went.

t

Jack stood at the bar, feeling conspicuous in this crowd. “Relax,”
Molly said into his ear. “To everyone here, we’re just two
businesspeople.”

Jack nodded slightly. Why was he so nervous? The rest of the

day his nerves had been fine. The flight to the Eagle County airport.
He even “flew” the plane for a short period, but the auto-pilot did
all the work, and had a sexy woman’s voice. Even navigating the
beginner slopes at the ski resort wasn’t stress-inducing. But now...?
It wasn’t like this was his first mission. This is the first mission with the
stakes so high, his inner voice told him.

He raised his glass to the bartender to get a refill.
“Make sure you get the good stuff,” Molly said. “No cheap

vodka, like some agents I know.”

Jack nodded again.
“I’m going over to schmooze with the host. Expect me to call

you over to talk shop. You got the story straight?”

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Like Slipping Undercover: Erotic Spy Fiction

“Yes, moth...yes.” Molly didn’t like condescension.
“Good.”
With the expensive vodka martini in hand, Jack surveyed the

crowd. White. Upper-class. Conservative. And most likely religious
zealots. These were the people the Union had lost to in the
Bloodless Civil War.

“That your wife?”
Jack looked over to his right. A tall, lanky brunette in a black

shimmering dress smiled at him. “Ah, yes, it is.”

“She seems quite lovely.” The woman walked closer to Jack,

raising her glass of champagne. He noticed the white stripe in her
hair, as if intentionally placed there. “And what is it that you do?”
she asked.

“I... ah... I’m a software developer.” He hadn’t prepared himself

for a strange woman to engage him. “I have a small company that
specializes in military security.”

“Fascinating,” she said, though her tone indicated boredom.

“What kind of military security?”

She was asking a dangerous question. They were supposed to

proposition only the Minister. “The kind the Minister would find
interesting,” he said finally.

“Oh come on. I won’t tell.”
Jack looked at her askance. What was she? In junior high?
She grabbed his crotch and Jack almost sprayed out his vodka

martini. But he also couldn’t help but groan a little. “Actually, I
don’t really care what you do. But I fuck a lot,” she said in a breathy
voice. “Do you think you wife would mind? Hmm?” She
continued massaging his dick through his pants.

“Jeez, who the hell are you?”
“People call me Mo Screws. Yes, that is my actual name. And you?”
“Ah, John Hightower.” Shit! He wasn’t supposed to pause on

his actual name. But then again, she might think that he was
distracted, as she continued massaging his crotch. “And, ah,
Mo...what do you do...besides fucking?”

“Oh...you know, this-and-that.”

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58

“No, I don’t know,” Jack said, somewhat surprised by the anger

in his voice. He’d divulged his story; she should tell him hers. But
the anger quickly faded as she continued her crotch rub. Now he
wanted to fuck this woman till they were both sore.

“You know,” she said, “we should go someplace more private,

don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t agree more.”
She led him toward the stairs. Her ass was nice and tight, not like

the huge apple bottom that was Molly’s. Still, it was quite nice, as she
knew how to move her hips to accentuate her assets.

Jack looked over to where his pseudo-wife had been and chilled.

She nor ON were anywhere to be seen.

“Everything OK?” Mo asked when she looked back at him, just

before ascending the staircase.

“Just my wife.”
“I see. Well, if she doesn’t see you with another woman, you

won’t have to make up a story. Besides, I think I know where she is.”

Jack followed Mo up the stairs and into one of the largest

bedrooms Jack had ever seen. The combination of reds and whites
gave the room an odd androgynous feel. In the center was a large
circular bed with a circular mirror overhead. Jack almost laughed;

he’d done a couple of porn shoots with such a setup. Strewn
throughout the room were chairs and sofas, many with people in

them, in various states of undress. So much for Christian family values
of the New Confederacy.

Then Jack saw Molly, standing by ON’s side. Mo and Jack walked

up to the two. “Boss,” Mo said, “this is John Hightower.”

ON grabbed John’s hand in a firm handshake. “A pleasure. I

already met your lovely Mrs. Morgan Hightower.” He was all smiles,
with laugh lines on the corners of his mouth and eyes. Gray hair had

invaded his temples. “I understand you have some kind of business
proposition.”

“That is correct,” Jack said as confidently as possible.
“And...?”
Jack looked around the crowded room. “Perhaps there is a quieter,

more private place?”

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“Nonsense!” ON said. “These people are otherwise engaged; they

couldn’t care less what we have to say.

Jack took in the room again. Mo had migrated to a love seat where

she was kissing and fondling a woman who had her right breast out
of her shirt. “Yes, very Christian of them,” he said under his breath.

ON said with a hint of derision, “There are many ways to express

God’s love, Mr. Hightower.”

Jack tried not to show his surprise that the man had heard him.
“Mr. Top, shouldn’t w’all get down to business,” Molly said with

an exaggerated Southern accent.

“I couldn’t agree more, madam,” ON replied. To Jack, he said,

“Your lovely wife filled me in on a lot of the details. So you have an
encryption company that wants to protect our military secrets.”

“That is correct,” Jack said. He cleared his throat; he’d practiced

this pitch several times before. “We seek to encrypt your confidential

military records so that they can safely be transferred to other
personnel within the Confederacy.”

“A wise proposition. What makes you think we do not already

have adequate encryption?”

“Because if you did, I wouldn’t be here.”
ON grinned. “Or perhaps you could be selling me a superfluous

piece of software.”

“I’m not. Take your time in your decision. Have your people tell

you the state of your security. Though I did nothing wrong, I
have...investigated your vulnerabilities.” In fact, the Union’s espionage

hackers had tried everything to get those launch codes. Jack and
Molly were the next line of attack. “And when you’re ready, contact
me.” Jack produced a fake business card.

“‘Hightower Security Inc.’” ON read off the card. “Great name

for running security. We’ll keep in touch.” ON thrust his hand out to
get shook.

Jack returned with a strong, firm, much practiced grip. ON would

look into his new nation’s security, find it lax, then contact Jack again
for the solution. Jack would then give the Minister a program that
would copy the confidential files before encryption, encrypt and
transfer them under another secret line to the Union, then encrypt

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60

and transfer the original files to the New Confederacy. The
Confederacy would never see the secret line, or so the thinking
went. Jack had his doubts.

Molly squeezed his hand in a fake sign of affection. But also, it

indicated that this phase of their mission was now pretty much
over. Jack had learned early on that espionage was rarely the action-
packed shoot-’em-ups of the movies. It was more about gaining
the mark’s trust than killing the bad guys, more about the mark
willingly giving the information than stealing it from him. Still, a
part of Jack wanted the shoot-’em-up.

ON raised his right hand, where he held the business card, and

crumpled the paper dramatically. “Now, Jack Charge, we are going
to someplace a tad more private and you’re going to tell me exactly
what you’re up to. And yes, Molly Munsch. we’re taking you too.”

Munsch? Even Jack hadn’t known her last name. He felt cold

metal at his side and saw Mo Screws from the corner of his eye.

ON waved to a small, but muscular short-haired black woman

to come over to them. She moved from the corner in which she
stood with precise, efficient steps, her eyes focused, like on a target.

Her black pants and blazer, and white shirt matched her security

persona.

“Ronda,” ON said, “you’re going to watch over Ms. Munsch

here.”

Ronda nodded slightly, as if too much movement would waste

too much energy, and moved over by Molly.

They followed ON to the cavernous bathroom where he kicked

out two guys kissing by one of the sinks and a woman who was
pegging her boyfriend in the empty hot tub. The man’s face turned
from giddy bliss to sullen melancholy as his girlfriend pulled the
strap-on dildo out of his ass.

After the two couples left, ON leaned on the sink the gay

partners had been. He threw the crumpled business card into a
nearby wastebasket. “So... where were we?”

“I have nothing to say!” Jack’s words echoed in the large

bathroom.

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Much more calmly, Molly said, still with a thick Southern

accent, “What my husband means to say is that we do not know
where y’all are getting your allegations. We are a quite legitimate
business.”

“Is that so, Morgan? Or is it Molly?” ON began pacing toward

the center of the room. A shower stall with three shower heads,
the hot tub, his and hers sinks, and space enough for a dance party
surrounded him. “Tell me, Molly, why did you become a spy with
your unique abilities? Were you approached after you were the
center of that massive orgy in the army barracks during the Third
Iraqi War?”

Jack’s mouth gaped; that had been only rumor.
“And you, stud-boy,” he said to Jack. “It must be hard, being

‘emotionally stilted.’” He used air-quotes, as if citing another
source. “And ‘capable of forming only physical relationships.’ But
I wouldn’t blame yourself. You became sexually active at a young
age. After discovering your father’s porn collection.”

Jack’s fists balled in anger. Molly touched him lightly. A calming

gesture, perhaps.

ON walked toward them. He brushed his fingers lightly across

Molly’s cheek. “You two really are incompetent, walking into my
party and expecting me to just hand over all confidential files to
the Union.” He backed off a bit but was still looking at Molly. “I
like you. I’m going to have my way with you before I kill you.
You, on the other hand...” He looked at Jack. “I’m going to have
you dumped into the unforgiving Colorado winter.”

Mo cleared her throat, like she wanted to say something.
“Yes?”
“Couldn’t I just shoot him? It’d be a lot quicker.”
ON looked up, as though he were considering it. But it was a

short consideration. He said, “No. Perhaps it is a weakness of mine,
but I want the man to suffer. You’ll fly him into the middle of the
woods and drop him off and let the cold or wolves or whatever
kill him.”

From his peripheral vision he saw Mo sigh. Perhaps she didn’t

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62

like that plan. But Jack was grateful. He didn’t want to die just yet.

“Now take him to the helipad. Make sure your gun is

sufficiently concealed.”

Mo nodded curtly.
The helicopter was sleek and black and quiet—very modern—

with two counter-rotating rotors instead of a tail rotor. Once they
were on the pad, Mo handcuffed him into a tight grip.

“I should kill you now and just dump your body in the forest.”

Not a hint of her earlier charm was present now.

“But you respect your boss’s wish too much.”
“Shut up!” She shoved him into the helicopter.
Another man sat in the pilot’s chair, wearing radio head-

phones. Mo got into the co-pilot’s seat while Jack was hand-
cuffed in the back.

“Where to?” A feminine voice asked. At first Jack didn’t know

whose it belonged to. The pilot rattled off some coordinates,
which Jack was sure was in the middle of nowhere. “OK. Taking
you there now.”

So the voice belonged to the helicopter! Just like the plane

flight in. A plan was forming in his head.

He began thinking about the erotic “debriefing” session he and

Molly had last night. Imagining her large breasts bouncing up and
down as she rocked on his cock made him hard.

“You smell that?” Mo asked from upfront.
“Hmm...Smells like my girlfriend’s jasmine scented shampoo.”
“Odd.” Mo’s hand was getting close to her crotch. Jack

wondered if she was even conscious of the lazy brushes her hand
was traversing over that area. “You know...”

“Huh?” The pilot seemed lost in thought.
“There’s something about closed spaces...I’ve fucked in cars...

On boats... In the elevator...”

“What the heck are you talking about?”
Jack pictured Molly arching her back as she came last night.

He felt wetness in his tight pants as pre-come leaked from his
cock-head. He could smell jasmine in his sweat.

Mo grabbed the pilot’s pants.

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“What the fu...heck?” He pushed her hand away.
“Oh come on, you can say it. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! You know you

want it. You’re harder than granite.”

“You know...I thought working for the Minister of War, I thought

I’d be doing the Lord’s work. But you people, you’re so sinful.”

Mo sat back in her chair, arms crossed. Damn! This wasn’t

supposed to happen. Jack continued imagining Molly coming last
night, but even with that, he was loosing his erection. Being
handcuffed in the back of a helicopter just wasn’t an erotic setting.

“You know, Bible Boy,” Mo was saying, “Jesus probably fucked

that whore Mary Magdalene sore.”

The pilot shook his head. “What is wrong with you? What’re

we going to do about him?” He nodded his head back to Jack.

“Training exercise,” Mo said.
“Yeah, that’s what Boss said. But I don’t get it. Why handcuff

him?”

“Just fly the damn chopper.”
The pilot didn’t even have hands on the stick, relying on auto-

pilot.

Jack sighed. He wasn’t going to get any help when Jesus Freak

can pray away his libido. But he had to try. Jack fantasized about
several scenes, but nothing was really gaining traction. Then he
thought about ON Top’s reported unique ability and what would
happen if he used it on Jack. Finally there was movement in his
trousers. He felt pheromone-laden sweat over his body.

“Boss wants him dead, doesn’t he?” the pilot asked.
“Just do your job, fly-boy.”
The pilot stared gape-mouthed at Mo, who now had fingers

under her waistband. “Fudggge-fuck it. I’ll fuck you if you tell me.”

By the console’s glow Jack saw Mo grin. “I though you’d

never ask.”

They attacked each other. The pilot’s headset came off. Then his

shirt. Mo lifted off her one-piece black dress. Jack wasn’t surprised
at all that she wore no underwear.

Jack was getting into the unfolding porn scene, but he had to

focus. His life was at stake. Into each other, they didn’t notice Jack

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scooting around to sit on his butt. Or him slouching down and
raising his legs up toward his captors. He had one shot to do this
right. He kicked both in the head. They went down instantly.

“Really?” he said to himself. “That really worked?” But he quickly

got over his incredulity as he maneuvered up front and pulled Mo
out of the co-pilot’s chair. She groaned but didn’t otherwise wake.
“Computer...take me home.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“Unrecognized voice,” she/it replied.
“Shit!” The helicopter was going to go to the coordinates. Then

what? Possibly land? Run out of gas? “Computer... emergency... please
take me home.”

“Unrecognized voice,” the woman’s voice said in the same

monotone.

The pilot groaned. Then righted himself in his seat. He looked to

Jack, then spotted Mo in the back. Jack stiffened, preparing himself

for a fight.

“Computer,” said the pilot, “take us back to the helipad.”
Jack gaped at the other man.
“I’m a pilot, not a murderer. Whatever you are, I hope you’re on

the Lord’s side.”

“Sure.” Jack couldn’t remember the last time he went to church.

Maybe as a child. Before his mother’s religion became Lapsed
Catholicism.

Jack felt the helicopter change course and the pilot cut the links

to the handcuffs with bolt cutters he had in the copter’s toolbox.

“This’s the best I can do.”
“It’ll work,” Jack said, looking at the cuffs still around his wrists.

“You have a name?”

“Joshua.”
“Nice to meet you, Joshua. I’m Jack.”
There was silence for a few minutes, then Joshua asked,

“That...wanting to have sex, that was you, wasn’t it?”

Jack nodded.
“How’d you do it?”
“Genetic manipulation.”

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“Genetic manipulation,” Joshua repeated, as if tasting a new

flavor. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”
“Lately... I’ve been having feelings. Feelings my girlfriend doesn’t

understand. Toward...toward other men. Do you think... genetic
manipulation can help?”

Jack shook his head, then stopped. He was going to have to frame

his answer in terms this guy would understand. “Listen...if God is
perfect, why would he create an imperfection like homosexuality?”

Joshua’s eyes grew as if he saw a whole other doorway he hadn’t

seen before. He nodded. Emphatically. “You know, by gosh... by God
you’re right!” He moved to hug Jack, but air turbulence from the
copter landing rocked the cabin.

Jack patted the man on the back instead. “Listen, your new

government is a bit odd. But, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, it does have
its seediness too. Embrace the seediness. I don’t think there’s anything
wrong with that either.”

Joshua opened the cabin and Jack hopped out. Joshua couldn’t

stop thanking the other man.

Jack pulled himself away. “I gotta go. You should wake her,”

pointing to the still unconscious Mo. “Check into a hospital. I
might’ve given you a concussion. Sorry.” Before Joshua could thank
him again, Jack was off to the hotel room.

The door was ajar. Jack opened it wider to see that the party had

been completely cleared, except for ON and Molly on the circular
bed, and Ronda standing guard. ON had his face buried in Molly’s
crotch. Jack’s cock stiffened. It was like he’d fast-forwarded the boring
set-up and had jumped right into the good part of a porn scene.

Ronda was the first to notice him. She walked up, her small pistol

pointed at him.

“Careful. I’m more dangerous than you think.” Jack’s hands had

been behind his back. Now he showed them to her, displaying the
broken handcuffs.

She squirmed. Jack suspected that she’d been touching herself as

she watched her employer going down on Agent DD7. He looked at

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her athletic but still sexy body, imagining her nude. “I practice
Buddhist meditation,” she said. “I can resist the temptations of the
flesh.”

Jack grinned and stepped closer. “It has nothing to do with

temptation and everything to do with evolution.” He grabbed her
pants and began massaging. She grimaced, but didn’t back away.
Moaned, in fact. “I’m told that sometime in the distant past our
ancestors developed the secret menstrual cycle, so that no one
could tell when anyone was fertile. They could fuck whenever the
mood pleased them. But if everyone can be horny at any time,
spraying musk to attract mates, then nobody would get anything
done. So those genes went dormant.”

She shook her head like she was telling him that she didn’t

speak his language. Then, like she came out of her reverie, she said,
“You’re a pig!” and spat.

Jack wiped the spit off his face and shoved her away. She stayed

back. He didn’t want to deal with her anyway. He walked to the
circular bed. ON was kneeling on the floor while Molly lay on the
edge. A box of condoms lay by the Minister’s feet. Jack’s penis
seemed ready to break the fabric of his pants to get out. “Mind if
I join?”

Molly moaned, rubbed her tits. She managed to say, “I see you

made it out alive.”

“Yeah. I created a minor sexual distraction.”
“Mine doesn’t seem to be that minor.”
ON came up from his muff diving and began clawing at Jack’s

pants.

“Jesus!” Jack exclaimed.
“I think his lizard-brain has taken over,” Molly said, lazily

fingering her bald pussy now that ON’s tongue was no longer
there. “He just grunts and groans now.”

“Or maybe he’s just being the typical male.”
Molly smiled.
Jack unzipped and unbuttoned his pants. He noticed how thick

and hard ON’s cock was. Jack’s asshole quivered in anticipation.
“Did you get his cock?” Jack asked Molly.

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She shook her head as she continued playing with herself. “I

sucked him off a bit, then he stripped me down and had been
dining on my cunt ever since.”

Jack gasped in pleasure as ON wrapped his mouth around his

cock. The New Confederate managed to take in all twelve inches
and then lick Jack’s balls. Jack too was rendered speechless. He
barely noticed that Ronda had walked to the bed and that she and

Molly were now kissing.

ON finally came up for air and started licking Jack’s shaft. Then

he went back to more deep-throating. This cycle was repeated a few
more times and Jack felt the heat of orgasm quickly building. His
porn star training kicked in. He used another technique to delay the
inevitable. He managed to say, “Please. I. Want. Your. Cock.”

ON stood and the two flipped positions. Jack lay on the bed,

his eager ass craving cock. By this time Ronda and Molly where in
the center, with Ronda nude from the waist-down and Molly’s face

buried in Ronda’s dark bush.

ON produced a condom and quickly put it on. The War

Minister’s shaft went in slow and steady. Jack grunted as his sphinc-
ter expanded to accommodate the large dick. But he also felt the
sublime heat of p-spot stimulation. “Oh God!” he groaned, eyes

rolling into the back of his head. From the mirror on the wall, he
managed to see that the girls, now both naked, were 69’ing, their
moans adding to the erotic chorus. Jasmine scented pheromones
filled the air.

Then Jack felt ON’s ability kick in, and his pleasure amped up.

The vibration was slight at first, then gradually increased. “Oh
Jesus-fucking God!” The heat of pleasure spread from his asshole
to his penis.

The women came first, Molly screaming hers and the other

woman a sort-of whimper. Then ON grunted and shuddered.
Normally Jack or his partner would need to stroke him off. But
this time was different. Jack felt climax quickly building. That
produced the most intense vibration. And that set Jack off. For the
first time ever, he came anally.

ON dismounted and collapsed on the bed. Both scooted toward

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68

the center, where the women were. Looking in the mirror, the ladies
were cuddling each other. Molly sat up, looking at ON. “Think you
can come again, Minister?”

“Um...”
Molly didn’t wait for him to answer. She began giving him a hand

job, and he began again his animalistic grunting.

Then Jack noticed Ronda was rubbing her pussy and small tits.

“Is this how it’s always like with you?” she asked.

“Um, yes.”
“Excellent. Fuck me, Jack.”
“Sure thing, Ronda”
Molly tossed Ronda a condom as she put one on ON’s cock.
Jack went onto his knees and inserted his cock between

Ronda’s legs. It went into her small pussy easily, it already well

lubricated with her juices. She cooed lightly. “So much for
Buddhist meditation,” he said.

“Tantric sex,” she retorted back.
This time, the rise toward climax was slower; Jack enjoyed the

presence of being in so much pleasure.

Meanwhile, Molly was bouncing up-and-down on ON’s dick,

screaming, “God-damn, this vibration is so hot! Better than a fuckin’
dildo!”

Ronda shuddered and shook, making that soft erotic whimper.

That caused Jack to grunt out his climax. Molly fired next, screaming
out obscenities. Lastly, ON groaned in orgasm. The four crawled into
the center of the bed, cuddling.

“Jack,” ON said loud enough for all four to hear. Jack was a bit

startled as this was the first time ON had spoken since Jack came back
into the hotel suite. “I’ll give you the launch codes and any other
confidential materials on one condition: you’re my fuck-toy. Agreed?”

Jack nodded, then said “Sure,” again loud enough for all to hear.
“Um...Boss?”
“Yes, Ronda.”
“I want a fuck-toy too.”
“OK. You get Molly. Agreed?”
“Mmm, yes,” Molly said contentedly.

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“And, of course, swapping is allowed.”
They each mumbled their ascent.
“OK then. This stays between us four, and whatever Union brass

you need to tell. Understood?”

They all agreed.
Jack snuggled in the bed, feeling ON’s now limp cock against his

butt. He could get used to this.

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I had killed Hitler for—what?—the twentieth time, and I was
getting pretty sick of it. Well, killed was overstating it. More like I
had prevented the fucker. We agents weren’t in the business of
murder. During the course of all those retro-jump missions,
however, I had gotten to know that human monster, or at least
learned his lineage like the back of my hand, going back
generations and exploring the roots of his diseased family tree.
But every time I’d averted a crucial ancestral coupling that would
eventually lead to the little bastard’s birth, word came down from
Time Zenith that something had gone awry and to go try it again.

It was enough to wear a chrono-agent to a frazzle.
Luckily, I had a twenty-four hour stopover at the Hub. You

might think a chrono-agent doesn’t think in terms of “hours,” not
when she goes speeding across the eras as easily as you cross a
room; and you’d be right. But still. The Hub was a fixed locality, a
strictly defined event in the timeflow. It had been constructed that
way, very purposefully. Minutes ticked by one after the other at the
Hub, in orderly sequence. It was a haven, a place of security that
wasn’t part of the Earth. Whatever mucking about we did in the
timeflow, nothing could affect things here.

It was the only stability I’d ever known. I had been recruited

as a young orphan, right out of the girls’ dormitory in the stasis-
locked Earth city where I was born. Even that place had never felt
safe. I remembered the endless emergency drills, the constant
threat of a breach in the city’s chrono-shield which would have
let the wild, contradictory timeflow roll right over us. Outside that
barrier, the ever-changing histories contended, fusing together
grotesquely, then tearing violently apart.

I had been eager to help the cause, to bring the timeflow back

under control and to continue the objective of the first
chrononauts: to stave off the degradation of the planet and create

Living On Schizo Time

Eric Del Carlo

an Earthly utopia by altering the past. That original retro-jump had

occurred in 2068, some twenty-five years ago as it is reckoned on
Earth, when overpopulation and environmental deterioration were
threatening humankind’s future. The result of that initial mission,
however, had been to almost immediately send time itself spinning
into chaos. Now, only a few dozen sites on the planet had been
kept preserved. Still, utopia remained the goal, and I was confident
it could be achieved if just the right chain of historical events could
be orchestrated. Humanity would be at peace and the Earth would
prosper, for all time.

But those paradisiacal ideals weren’t much on my mind as I

stepped limply onto the streets of the Hub, beneath its “sky.” I
smelled greasy, frying food. The gritty asphalt crunched under my
boot heels as I walked along through the garish glare of eateries,
whorehouses and equipment depots. The Hub was stable as far as
the timeflow was concerned, yes; but it was also a trashy way
station, like a sleazy border town out of ancient literature. This
wasn’t Earth. This was, in a way, nowhere. But it a safe nowhere, a
sanctuary that danced impossibly on the head of a temporal pin.

Time Zenith was supposed to be a place like this too, an island

carved out of the untamed timeflow streaming all around the Hub.
But Time Zenith was also rumored to be immaculate, lavish, the
place where all the big decisions were made. It was there that the
big heads oversaw the changes we agents made to the timeflow.
They studied every tiny twitch and tic, factoring in every new
variable, laboring to shape the past so that it would result in that
ultimate paradise on Earth.

I still believed in that objective. But I was no raw recruit any

longer. A certain cynicism had set in, or maybe it was just general
fatigue. Whatever, I felt bleary and bleak as I made my way along
the street, trying to sort out my immediate needs. I should get
some food. I should have myself a shower and a good long sleep
in a bed with reasonably clean sheets.

But those weren’t my only needs. I was a young, healthy

female. There were primal requirements that my body insisted be
addressed. Or to be blunt: I needed to get laid.

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72

Food, though, first. I knew a place that served Asian cuisine,

and I was very much in the mood for some spicy noodles and
crisp vegetables. I’d been eating heavy European food, with a
decidedly Germanic flair, and wanted something light but filling.

The Hub was about the size of a small town on Earth, and its

streets were laid out in a sensible grid pattern. Building materials
had been brought here by the same temporal means used to
transport us agents. Maybe the Hub had started out as a sparkling
clean place, as tidy as Time Zenith was said to be. But during its
history it had gotten rundown, until it looked like a bad
neighborhood in an old decaying Earth city. Everything was
crumbling. Every building and piece of equipment had been
patched up in helter-skelter fashion. We were told that resources
were limited, that the energy for the temporal technology had to
be saved up to send the chrono-agents into the timeflow.

Right now I didn’t care. I was glad to see the Hub. Glad to have

escaped the ever-changing and dangerous past again. Glad to be
among my own kind once more.

At the Asian eatery, I dug into my meal. The joint was small

with water stains on the walls, but it still took me a whole bowl
of won ton soup to notice the other diner. He was tucked into a

corner, picking uncertainly at a plate of steamed greenery. I eyed
him as I ate up my crackling noodles. He was ginger-haired, with
pale freckled skin and soft, almost girlish eyes. He looked young.
More than that, he had the innocent vibe of a new recruit.

With his slim frame and bony arms I might have figured him

for one of the Hub’s support staff. You needed some grit and
muscle to go retro-jumping. But no, he had the insignia of a
chrono-agent on his jacket.

When I was done eating, I wandered over to his table with a

cup of tea in hand. “Hey, brother, mind if I join you?”

He blinked long-lashed eyes up at me for quite a while.

Something was wrong with this guy, a deep instinct told me. In a
dazed sort of voice, he said, “Sure...that’d be nice.”

I sat, noticing he’d barely touched his food. “No appetite?”

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He shrugged, but it was more like a spastic jerk of his narrow

shoulders. “Thought I was. I should be...”

Suddenly I knew: he was just back from a mission. And what

was more, I was willing to bet it was his very first one. I sipped
my tea, noting what were now to me the obvious telltales—his
unfocused gaze, the nervous twitches.

“It gets easier,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Jumping. I remember my first one. They briefed me, of course.

I knew exactly what to expect—the temporal transition, the
disorientation. I studied the history of my target time.” I muttered
a little laugh. “And it was still a mind-blowing experience. It was
like a hand reaching into me, wrenching out my soul, and flinging
it into a hurricane. When I got where I was supposed to be, I

huddled under a haystack and cried for about four hours.”

He was looking at me across the table, really seeing me now. I

liked his face. There was a sweetness there. His mouth tugged into
the start of a smile.

“That’s about how it was for me,” he said.
“Want to tell me about it?” I set down my empty tea cup.
“Yes.”
“Want to tell me over a drink? Unless you’re actually going to

eat that.”

He smiled for real this time and pushed the plate away.
I said, “My name’s Beth.”
He mouthed my name silently, like he was committing it to

memory. “Darcy,” he said.

We left the restaurant together, and I was thinking how nice it

would be if I didn’t actually have to go visit one of the Hub’s seedy
brothels for some company.

t

The alcohol stung, but it was already undoing some of the stresses
I had accumulated during my last jump. It felt like I’d sleepwalked

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74

through my last mission, or else taken it on as a kind of waking
nightmare. The historic locales had become too familiar with
repetition—the 19th Century architecture, the quaint customs,

even some of the people I’d encountered on previous jobs.

“Still,” Darcy said, with a glass of whiskey in front of him,

“Hitler. I mean, that’s something, isn’t it?” He didn’t sound quite
sure, which I put down to nervousness.

I shrugged and had another hefty swallow of my drink. “Yes.

Of course. But. I’ve had the same mission over and over. It happens.
Some agents do nothing but try to eliminate, say, Genghis Khan
or Caligula or Dick Cheney or Ulrike Meinhof, any historical figure
who caused widespread suffering and did nothing to advance the
possibility of utopia.”

“So,” Darcy said, “Hitler just won’t go away, then?”
“Some evil people don’t eradicate easily, evidently. It’s probably

the same for saintly ones, but I wouldn’t know. Mind you, I’ve
prevented Hitler’s life lots of times. He doesn’t get born in those
realities I create by retro-jumping into the timeflow. But the idea
of him doesn’t completely vanish. Somebody else comes along and

does what he did—or near enough. Maybe the time was just ripe
at that moment in history for a Hitler-type person to emerge. And

sometimes I screw it up. He gets born to some other mother, or
sired by another father. But it always turns out to be him.”

He looked down at the scarred bartop as he listened. Now he

lifted his head. “Why do you keep doing it?”

“Orders. What kind of question is that?” I said this a bit too

sharply. He winced, and I felt bad. “Sorry. Guess I’m still winding
down.”

“It’s okay.”
I added, “As an agent, you get trained for something and get

to know the particulars really well, and after that it’s all you end
up doing. Even if every time you finish the job, TZ wants you to
do it again.”

“Right. TZ.” Again his tone was uncertain.
I shot him an amused frown. Such a newbie. “Time Zenith.”
“Right.”

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I drank more of my drink and gazed at Darcy. My interest had

grown. Maybe I was seeing myself as a fledgling chrono-agent in

him. Maybe he was just simmering my juices. But I liked how his
red hair caught the murky light of the bar. I wanted to comb my
fingers through it.

And with that thought, my hand rose without any explicit

command. My fingertips traced lightly through the hair above his

temple. My little finger grazed the top of his pale earlobe.

Darcy’s eyes went wide, and he stiffened on his barstool. “What’d

you do that for?” he asked.

I could have made excuses. I could have said I was strung out

from my last mission, that the booze had impaired my judgment.
But I thought, the hell with it, and gave him the truth: “I really want
to fuck you.”

The naive shock that came to his face just made him more

desirable. Eventually, though, he smiled, and it was a lovely, salacious
grin. I realized only then that he hadn’t gotten to tell me anything
about his mission; I’d dominated the conversation with my own
prattles. I took his hand and drew him off the stool, determined to
make it up to him.

t

The booze had loosened me and the prospect of sex with an
attractive male buoyed my spirits, but I still found myself glancing
upward as we stepped outside, on our way to a room. There was
nothing up there; but it was a kind of nothing that could shrivel
your soul if you let it. The Hub had existed for nearly two and a
half decades, and even in its dilapidated state it possessed a certain
splendor. But I had always wished that somebody could somehow
paint clouds or a field of stars above it.

Actually, just the fact that the Hub was here at all was amazing

enough. It stood as solid proof of the effectiveness of the temporal
technology, even if that same fantastical science had led violently
to the hopeless jumbling of Earth’s history, so that it would take a
fucking miracle to sort things out again, even with TZ calculating

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every microscopic variable until they were blue in the—

“Beth, are you crying?”
I had stopped in the street, catching a breath that hitched in

my chest. The tears had sprung suddenly to my eyes, but before I
could feel a flush of embarrassment, Darcy took my shoulders and
drew me into an embrace. It felt cozy and intimate, and surprised
me in a good way. I pressed my face against his throat and inhaled
his scent, a clean masculine smell.

“Sometimes the whole thing catches up to me,” I murmured.

“Usually at inappropriate moments. Sorry.” I sniffled.

“It’s okay.”
I straightened up, wiping my eyes. “It’s just part of being a

chrono-agent,” I said in my tough-girl voice, which didn’t sound
very convincing just now. “You’ll find it out yourself.”

“I suppose I will,” he said with a wistful fatalism.
We headed for the room. It was on the second level of a tum-

bledown establishment, which was laid out like an old cheap
motel on Earth. The Hub, of course, provided places for agents to
rest, to stop and collect themselves between missions; but it wasn’t
anything like a home, lacking even the false permanence I’d felt in
the girls’ dormitory when I was a child.

Still, as I shut the door behind us, I wasn’t concerned with the

ambience. My flesh prickled with desire. I gazed hungrily at Darcy
as he looked around the small, somewhat shabby room.

“You’ll get used to the Hub,” I said.
He turned. “You’re a lovely woman, Beth.”
Heat dotted my cheeks at that. I smiled.
“How old are you?” he asked.
On Earth, that was maybe something you didn’t want to ask a

woman. Here, it was just a ridiculous question. I shrugged. “I don’t
know.”

“You don’t?”
“I’ve lost track. Time passes here at the Hub, it passes when I’m

out on a mission. But there’s no calendar to check off the days in
any orderly way. Things jumble. You forget. It’s something that—”

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“—that I’ll find out for myself,” he finished with a bleak little

laugh.

I felt for him. He was new, and he was uneasy. Softly, I said,

“We call it schizo time.” He nodded, looking lost. I slipped off my
jacket and tossed it onto the only chair. “I’m going to have a
shower first.” Again my breath caught briefly, but this time it was
purely from desire. “You want to join me...?”

Getting the water going in the stall, I was very aware of him

undressing in the other room. I had slipped off my clothes. The
pipes complained, but steam started billowing, fogging the
bathroom’s mirror. I heard Darcy’s bare feet on the tiles. I turned.

He was slim but not scrawny. His muscles were lean, but his

body appeared nicely toned. No scars. I had a few. Shit happened
on missions, stuff you’d never expect, and I, just like every other
agent who survived, adapted. By now I could handle myself in just
about any situation.

Darcy stood there with the shower’s steam wisping about his

trim, naked form. I was staring. He was doing the same. Already
his cock was stirring amidst ginger-colored curls. My nipples had
stiffened, and anticipation rippled through me.

“You really are lovely,” he said, a bit hoarsely.
“So are you.” I stepped into the stall and put out my hand.

“Come on.”

We kissed for the first time under the spray, faces wet, my dark

hair dampening around my shoulders. His lips pressed me softly,
and I felt the flicker of his long eyelashes against my face. When I
opened my mouth, the warm water spilled over our meeting
tongues. I felt his hardness against my leg.

I broke the kiss and reached for the soap. “I really do have to

get clean,” I said over the noise of the spray.

He grinned. He wasn’t in any mad rush.
I lathered up my hands. The warmth of the water and the

slipperiness of the soap felt good. Where I’d been, it had been cold.
Darcy soaped up his hands as well, and laid them on my shoulders.
I felt the strength in his fingers as he started to knead my flesh.

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When I put my hands to him, I found how solidly built he was

despite being so thin. His chest was almost flat, but the pectoral
muscles were like metal plates. I flicked my thumbs across his
nipples, liking the feel of the tiny hard buds. He returned the
attention, sliding slick hands over my breasts, catching one nipple
between two knuckles and squeezing just enough to draw a gasp
from me.

He stood a few inches taller than I did, and his mouth fell onto

mine again, grinding now, his tongue stabbing. I trailed my fingers
down his narrow flanks, counting off each rib, until my hands
rested on his hipbones. He continued to caress my tits, clutching,
grasping, his strength rising.

I reached around and seized his ass with both hands. Soapy

water spilled down our bodies. His hard cock had risen between
us, the swollen crown rubbing across my navel. I gouged that
sweet ass, digging in with my fingers, thrilled by the tautness of
the flesh.

But I had to get a hold of that cock. A hot tingling raced all

under my skin, setting me flowing. I was panting into Darcy’s
mouth, even as I thrust my tongue back against his. Letting go of
his ass-cheeks, I slithered an eager hand between our slippery
bodies.

His, though, was already there. His fingers were diving between

my thighs, grazing my sensitive lips. A fingertip traced my furrow,
and I jumped at the contact. He delved deeper, easily prying that
finger into me, finding me damp within as well as without. My
hips awoke, and I jammed myself anxiously onto that digit.

I put back my head, wet hair trailing halfway down my back,

as Darcy swirled his finger inside me. Another joined it, then a
third. I ground my pussy onto the whole bunch, loving the feel
of the hard knuckles, the flexing joints. His thumb skimmed my
clit and I cried out, the sound echoing off the tiles.

Through the drizzle from the showerhead, I blinked at him,

delightfully dizzied by the orgasm. It had been so straightforward,
so matter-of-fact. But there had been nothing unfeeling about it.

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This, then, wasn’t just sex. Even if we never did anything like this
again, I realized that I would remember this person for a long
while to come.

Darcy drew his fingers from me, grinning again. As it had been

in the bar when I’d run my fingers through his hair, I watched my
hand float out again and this time take hold of his cock. I didn’t
know which of us shivered first at the contact, but my shoulders
bunched tightly and a deep flutter went through my middle.

His cock was, of course, as hard as mahogany, and of a very

decent size. I felt the individual squiggles of the veins lining his
shaft. With my thumb I explored the swollen cap, grazing across
his piss-slit, then I traced my way down his cable-thick underside
vein and cupped his balls. They stirred against my fingers.

With my other hand, I fumbled behind and found the valves.

I shut off the water. “I think I’m clean enough,” I said as the drain
gurgled. Still with him delicately in hand, I stepped from the stall.
My heart raced eagerly. It was all I could do to pause so that we
could towel dry, before hurrying to the bed in the other room.

The bed frame creaked as I encouraged him to lie back. How

delectable he looked, spread out before me. I climbed onto the
foot of the bed, on my knees, shouldering apart his smooth thighs.
Hunger burned in me, primal and powerful. I took hold of his
cock again, squeezing the straining shaft, beholding it at eye level
now. He was beautifully shaped, with a nice upward curve to him.

His ginger curls were dark with damp. I inhaled his soapy scent.

Then I put my mouth to him.
His whole body jerked, jouncing the mattress beneath us. I

sealed my lips around his thick knob and swirled my tongue over
it. I tasted the oily drizzle of his precome, savoring its mildly salty
sting. I closed my fingers around his testicles again, with my thumb
and forefinger gripping him snugly around the base of his shaft.

I slid my mouth down his shank, feeling those squiggly veins

now with my avid tongue. I felt too the pulse and heat of him, as
I swallowed him inch by inch. Far-off somewhere, I heard him
moan, a long drawn-out sound of pleasure. But I was occupied

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with the fantastic livingness of him that I held in my mouth. How
vulnerable he was, I couldn’t help thinking, even as I took him

into my throat. Wet wiry pubes grazed my nose.

His legs closed around my shoulders as I lifted and dropped

my mouth. Spit ran down his shaft. His hips were thrusting
upward. Strands of my still-wet hair spilled over my eyes. I felt his
balls roiling in my grasp. My own desire was rising, streaming

through me.

Suddenly I wrenched my mouth away and, hearing his stunned

cry, jackknifed myself further up the bed. With a fast tussling, I set
his cock to my waiting hole and slammed myself down onto him.
It was my turn to cry out, a ragged tear of delight that probably
carried right through the room’s walls. I didn’t care.

Darcy’s cock filled me. I sat atop him, gripping him with my

pussy. Pleasure radiated outward from the penetration, igniting
every part of my body, so that the ends of my toes tingled and the
tips of my ears blazed. I looked down on Darcy, his features
contorted but still pretty. I planted a foot on either side of him and

started to ride him. Immediately I felt the strain in my calves, but
the pain was washed away, disappearing like a tree branch caught
in a white-water river. Pleasure overwhelmed me. Darcy’s

answering thrusts started again, making my every downward
lunge that much more intense.

Again, having taken him into my body, I felt a sense of

ownership that heterosexual men must never experience. It was
such a beautiful thing to be entered, to take the living part of a
male into oneself. It was something more than just a bodily
connection, bigger than the mere fact of meat on meat. At least,
that was how it felt when it was good.

And this... this was very good.
Darcy’s hands closed over my hips, and I plunged on him

harder and faster. Damp hair clung to my face. My wet mouth was
open and panting, until a new cry tore from me, loud and
unashamed. I tightened around Darcy, the pleasure burning over
me, through me. I rode out the final stages of my rapturous come.

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Around me, the room seemed to wash over with reds and

pinks. My head felt light. I started to fall away to one side. Strong
hands caught me, gently lowered me. I was being rolled onto my
back, with my flesh still glowing, the pleasure barely ebbing. The
bed’s frame creaked again, and a warm lovely weight was settling
on top of me.

I was entered again, that slick length of him filling me once

more. Lifting my legs, I cinched them about his waist as he thrust
himself deep into me. I welcomed every inch. Some distant part
of my brain took the time to appreciate the advances in birth
control that allowed this sort of contact between us. I’d been
spending too much time in the 19th Century. But my mind
skipped quickly past the matter, letting the sensations of the
moment take over.

It was exquisite. Darcy fucked at a steady tempo. I clutched his

shoulders, looking up into those long-lashed eyes. He kissed me
as we tumbled along together, toward what must lead soon to his
much-deserved climax. Even as this occurred to me, I felt the fresh
stirring, the pleasure seizing me yet again. He drove himself harder.
I heard and felt his balls slapping against me.

Orgasmic delight was blinding me once more when his come

started to jet. I crushed my legs around his waist and dug my
fingers into his shoulders, relishing the hot spurts, feeling every
one. My own joy seemed to mingle crazily with his, so that for
that moment I wasn’t sure whose come I was experiencing.

t

Later, in the drowsy satisfied afterglow, I thought of remarking on
how much fun it had been or even thanking him for the episode,
but that just seemed tacky. We lay together, nestling, and I felt
genuinely happy for the first time in I didn’t know how long.

But something was nagging at me. I didn’t pursue it, not

wanting anything to spoil this, but it rose into my mind anyway;
and I found I couldn’t let it go.

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82

“Why,” I asked, “did you want to know how old I was earlier?”
I thought he might have drifted asleep, but when he answered,

his voice was clear. It was also soft and tinged with what might
have been sorrow. “I just wanted to know.”

“That’s no answer.” A note of disquiet sounded in my head,

and I remembered thinking when I’d first met him at the Asian
restaurant: Something’s wrong with this guy.

I turned to look at him, but he kept his eyes on the ceiling.

Reluctantly, he said, “I wanted to know if you’d been born before
the original chrononauts went on that first mission.”

Pushing up onto an elbow, I felt my brow tighten. “I wasn’t. I

was born a year after.” It had been in a city encircled by a hastily
erected chrono-shield, during those days of great chaos. I had been
left an orphan by the upheaval. “Why? What does it matter?”
Because plainly it did matter.

Finally he looked at me. “That’s my mission, the one assigned

to me by Time Zenith. I’m supposed to go back and stop the first
chrononauts from making their retro-jump. I tried once already,
but...things didn’t work out. So I have to go try it again, they told
me. I just thought if you had been born before 2068, my target
year, then, y’know, you’d still grow up to be you. The changed
history wouldn’t affect you. I don’t want you to change.”

Around me the room reeled, and I just let it whirl, closing my

eyes and slowly shaking my head. It had come to this. TZ had given
up on the ideals that had driven the chrono-agents for so long.
Utopia couldn’t be achieved. That was what they were admitting
by sending this newbie on a jump back to 2068 to cancel out the
whole endeavor. This was surrender. It was failure.

But Darcy didn’t understand. I touched his cheek with my

fingertips. “You don’t have to worry. This is the Hub. Whatever
happens, whatever is undone or nullified—it doesn’t matter. Here
I’m outside the timeflow. So are you. So is every agent here.
Causality is meaningless at the Hub. This, my sweet, is schizo time.”

I gave his cheek a friendly stroke. “You’ll get used to it.”

He smiled, and we kissed. Maybe he understood the full

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implications of his mission, maybe not. Maybe I wouldn’t be sent
back to erase Hitler anymore. Maybe every last agent would be
ordered by Time Zenith to undertake Darcy’s assignment. One of
us might eventually eradicate the entire retro-jumping technology,
returning reality to what it was before that first chrononaut
mission. Earth would still be overpopulated and suffering from
environmental degradation, but perhaps those problems could be
addressed head-on.

Meanwhile, we chrono-agents would continue to do our duty,

whatever it turned out to be. I nuzzled with Darcy on the bed.
You’ll get used to it, I’d told him several times now. But I wasn’t
sure I believed that any longer.

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84

Everyone wore a mask on the Rigel-7 Royal Scepter; therefore no
one noticed the two spies passing each other in the space station’s
passages.

Each corridor and room was enclosed in adamantine-titanium

walls, and thus free from the planet’s swirling cocktail of deadly
gasses—the atmosphere was rich with hydrogen, helium,
methane, and ammonia—but too many hull problems led to an
inordinate number of compromised sealant issues. Quarters—
particularly those of slumming Merchant-Liege dignitaries—were
regularly maintained and reinforced, but the rest of the hundred
square mile vessel was catch as catch can. Placards and regular
Public Service Announcements on the internal Scepter Staff Missive
System warned how precious atmosphere processing masks and a
healthy dose of caution could be.

The spies walked independently, passing each other without

any indication of recognition. Theirs was not the profession for
nods or curtsies or small talk. None of the other station pedestrians
paid them the slightest mind or suspicion.

Which was exactly how they wanted it.
If Sukikun drew attention, it was for her lithe figure, her

muscled arms and the sensual, graceful way she walked. She
moved with the casual attentiveness of an acrobat. Her clothes

were midgrade nobility, clinging to her hips and legs, fashionably
loose around the torso. The mask and hood hid all but her eyes
behind breather cylinders and protective rubber.

Makioki was no svelte athlete. His frame was broad and bulky,

sculpted like a bodybuilder. His stride drew his trousers taut across
his codpiece, showy and boastful in ways only the nobility would
or could be, and though his gloved hands were broad enough to
palm a tea kettle, they were capable of the most precise and subtle

Passing

Kaysee Renee Robichaud

manipulations. His mask was shaped like a surrealist vision of a
rhinoceros, the lower half bulging with the filtering canisters
which was crowned with a pair of horn-shaped transmission
antennae. It was the mask for a noble’s favored seneschal or pet
plaything.

Though there was no particularly noticeable recognition

between the spies, they did exchange information. Subtle shifts of
the hands, blinks of the eye in an established code-pattern.

An invitation, her to him: “Come to the rendezvous room.”
His reply: “I will, but I’m being watched.”
They walked different routes to their destination.

t

Sukikun arrived at the room first. It was a nondescript meeting
place fit for any of the pleeb processing engineers toiling in the
bowels of the station, fishing valuable elements from the roiling
gasses outside with HoT filaments and CoLD nets.

A pair of lights overhead revealed the sleeping palate, a

personal sized cooling unit for food and drink storage—sized to
hold a week’s worth of rationed perishables and bottles—and the
standing room only water closet.

Sukikun hit a switch and the shutters slowly rose, revealing a

blanket of chartreuse fog on the other side of the viewport. No
apparent cracks or breaks in the transparent alloy. Her wrist sensor
affirmed a good atmosphere mix in the room. As well, it detected
no listening apparatuses. She hit the button to drop the shutters,
once more.

The spy smiled to herself, wondering what mechanical

architect had been foolish enough to install windows in such a
place as the Scepter. Sukikun’s mother would never have agreed to
such a thing, would have railed against even the idea...

Of course, the very real possibility was it had been an architect

ordered by a know-nothing Imperial Seat noble. That architect or
engineer would not be quite as headstrong as Sukikun’s mother,

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86

then. Undoubtedly, that architect engineer still lived. How might
Sukikun’s life have been different, had her mother not been quite
so headstrong or fearless or heedless?

This was no time to think about dead relations or stolen

opportunities. It was time only for last moment preparations for
the information exchange. After that, there was closing business
to attend and a quick escape. She had the schedule of scheduled
departures for the next five hours; each would give her ample
opportunity to jettison enough cargo to compensate for her mass
so no obvious signs of her passage could be had.

Providing, of course, Makioki had not failed.
The door summons chirped before the slab slid aside. Makioki

entered, bowing his head to avoid striking the low doorjamb. His
mask’s heavy breaths told her he had been hustling to get here.
Though the tunic was intended to be loose across his chest, his

inhalations expanded the muscles beneath to flatten the folds and
strain the material. She caught the sight of sweat sheen and rosy
red muscle fatigue.

After the door slid shut behind him, he moved toward her, and

she embraced him. His induction into the role of spy and
revolutionary was from a very different source than hers. He grew

stony silent when asked, but Sukikun could tell his loss was also a
personal one. A parent or spouse? A child or sibling? Everyone in
the Undrentine League had sorrow and fury.

Someone important was gone. He had broken himself upon

the rocks of physical perfection to compensate. His body was
hardened from the attention.

Through the mask’s speaker, his voice became a boxy cough.

“Do I speak to your ears alone?”

She leaned back and pulled her mask up and off. Revealing the

soft, golden-hued skin and dirty circles around her eyes. “You do.”
She gestured to him to follow her lead.

After a moment’s staring, he pulled his mask up and off, taking

a deep breath of recycled air. His nose had been broken and
improperly set since his dossier’s last photograph. His eyes were
ringed with the same sleepless darkness as hers. His dark hair rose

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in spiky waves from the hood. There remained a quality of
handsomeness to him, however. And danger.

“Any news?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She said, “If you haven’t secured passage, the Cutty Sark is

carrying ore to Capital tonight.”

He nodded.
“Why so quiet?”
Finally, he spoke. Gruff as a roused panda. “I’ve been suffering

bad dreams. Suffocation, blaster beams cutting some kind of vessel
and a kill team on the prowl.”

She frowned, considering. Makioki’s dossier and the Grade 5A

stamp it bore. 5A: Psychic Sensitivity. Minor levels of telepathy,
telekinesis and precognition. When he was fifteen, he had been

inducted into the PSYker School, but having showed no
improvement in these areas after six months of intense testing and
observation, he had been discharged.

Sometimes a dream was simply a dream, but with Makioki?

They might be something altogether different.

Sukikun asked, “Are you feeling tense?”
His lips pursed, but his head dropped and rose in a single, deep

nod.

She pulled him down into a kiss. He was resistant at first, but

her yearning lips chipped away at the frost on his feelings. His
mouth proved warm, his tongue skilled. When she slipped him
the lozenge report, he accepted it and slotted it into his cheek
without disturbing the passion exchange. He was good.

After the kiss broke, he chewed the pill. She waited while the

info gel soaked in. Within seconds, his eyelids fluttered, vision
overwritten by the video data transmission.

“I’m going home,” he said. The half-smile on his face was

almost relieved, mostly disappointed. “I still have much to do in
the Imperial Seat, but they’re calling me home.”

“Everyone needs time to restore their head and heart,” she said.

“Don’t you have something for me?”

He frowned. “I’ve been scrutinized. I have to exchange the data

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88

via another method. It’s encrypted, so there’s no chance of
interference.”

“Meaning?”
He said two words, and she shook her head. “No way.”
“It will be easy for them to extract it. The data seed will speed

toward your ovum but won’t impregnate anything. They’re not actual
sperm. And any real stuff that comes along is irradiated beyond the
ability to—”

“Extraction is not the issue,” she said. “I don’t connect that way.”
“Ever?”
“I did,” she said, “and now I don’t. No offense.”
“How am I supposed to not,” he said with a humorless grimace,

“take offense?”

“Are you clean?”
“Of course.”
“And your most recent papers?”
He said nothing.
“Makers,” she said. “How many partners since the last test?”
He blushed.
“That many?”
In the refrigeration unit, he found a bottle of Imperial rum. He

showed her the bottle, and she nodded. He poured two glasses.
“Succeeding in the Seat requires,” he said, “copious hand greasing.”

“And body greasing, from the sounds of things.”
“And I wanted to kill them all,” he said. “Each and every one. I

envisioned them dead before I came. It’s not very healthy.” Vendettas
made for lousy bedfellows.

She blanched. “So whack off into a cup or something. I’ll seal it,

bring it back.”

“You know delivery of unprotected intelligence materials is

unacceptable. If the information is going to be meaningful... useful...
it cannot be compromised.”

“What’s unacceptable,” Sukikun said, “is your assumption that

I’d just bend over at your insistence.”

“I apologize,” he said. With a heartfelt smile, he added, “I can be

charming, if you let me.”

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She did not doubt that, but this felt too coercive for her

preferences. “Will you take a STEEDTest?” It was not the most
thorough test for diseases and genetic contagions, but a STEEDTest
could at least put her worst fears to rest after a fifteen minute wait.

“If it will ease your mind,” he said. “I’m sorry this is so difficult

for you. The Seat has inured me to... shyness.”

The STEEDTest applicator drew a blood sample from his thumb,

and then went to work. It purred softly on the table between them.

Five minutes later, he said, “It’s funny.”
“Hmm?”
“Time’s flexibility. Fifteen minutes flies when I’m performing the

deed that led to this test. But now? Fifteen minutes feels like an
eternity. Long enough for me to consider every one of my mistakes
and fears.”

She nodded and silently added, Or confirm my own dread. Of

course, the five minutes had already expanded to contain all her own
terrors. Worries multiplied like termites.

Say he had something. Then what? She had come too far to simply

abort the mission. Her hatred had driven her here. The memory of
her mother’s death, the memory of the hundred hate crimes and
cruelties the Imperial Seat had been party too. The hundred she had
witnessed, that was. There were a googol more, she was sure. The
Seat controlled a hundred worlds, after all.

Could fear counteract that motivation? Would it? And the most

terrifying question of all: If she gave in to her fear, might that hatred
turn inward?

She leaned her forehead on her palm and stared at the test. “Hurry

up, little guy.”

“I believe I’m fine,” he said, but his voice trembled. He looked

like he wanted her to take his hand. She considered doing just that,

but something stopped her.

It was crazy. They had exchanged saliva, after all. Reaching over

and setting her slender hand atop his, maybe squeezing to offer a
little human contact and comfort was a hell of a lot less... body
fluidic... but she hesitated. Crazy or not, her feelings did not want
her to do a simple little thing like that.

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90

Maybe because of his presumption.
“They can cure most everything these days,” he said. “So even

if there’s an issue... If it’s a small one, there’s a cure.”

“My body,” she said, “is my temple. I don’t profane it. I don’t

pollute it. I don’t poison it.” Hurry the fuck up, STEEDTest!

“Not even if your mission is compromised? No memory

adjusters? No retardation gas?”

She said, “Don’t call it ‘retardation gas.’”
He said, “I’m sorry,” in a shamed, little boy voice that seemed

utterly out of place coming from him.

“But to answer your question, no. If the mission is

compromised, I find a way out. If there is no way out, there’s
always one final solution.”

His face betrayed no emotional response to this.
The STEEDTest rumbled on, working as quickly as it could. Still

not fast enough.

Then, the door summons cheeped. Makioki’s head whipped

round to face the door so fast, Sukikun almost expected his neck
to snap.

“Who knows we’re here?” he asked.
“Whoever you brought,” she said.
The door chimed again and then hissed, when the seal broke.
Sukikun nabbed the STEEDTest and dove toward the floor as

the door swept aside. The team waiting outside did not let the door
open completely before their blasters blazed. White beams burned
holes through the couch, shattered the half-filled rum bottle,
sending its now boiling contents to soak the carpet.

“A kill team!” Makioki grabbed the table and launched it toward

the door. A pair of blasts disintegrated most of its mass before it
struck, but enough remained to hit the emergency lock panel beside
the door. This triggered the door to sweep shut and lock.

One of the kill team members dove in before the heavy panel

fully closed, an androgynous figure in blackout armor. The armor
was designed to bend the light, hiding all distinguishing details—
only the most general height, weight or gender details showed

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through. The killer fired its pistol over one shoulder, as it turned
to the panel to deactivate the lockdown.

Before the killer could hit the three-button unlock sequence,

Sukikun launched a hard-soft attack. She came in low, body
turning in fluid spins, feet lashing out to strike the pressure places
behind both knees. The killer let out a grunt and bet backward,

pistol discharging into the ceiling and then the floor. After Sukikun
delivered a chop across the throat, it stopped moving.

“We don’t have much time,” Makioki said. At first, Sukikun

thought he meant the STEEDTest purring in her hand, but then
she realized the outside force was trying to burn a way in.

“Who are we dealing with?”
“Unknown,” he said. “This isn’t the Imperial counterintelligence

team I’ve been dodging.”

Sukikun ripped the mask off the assailant, revealing green-

tinged skin and puffy features. She said, “Ceti Primary?”

“I thought they were on our side.”
“What information are you carrying?”
“Unknown. The data is triple-deck encrypted. I have my orders:

deliver it to you and then return home.”

“Must be something Ceti Primary doesn’t want us to know.”
“Maybe not all the Ceti,” he said. “How much longer?”
A glance said the door was almost ruined. She scanned the

room. “When was the last time you space walked?”

“You’re crazy,” he said. “There’s no atmo, out there.”
“Actually there is,” she said. To his slack jaw and stern gaze,

she added, “The planet is a gas giant. It’s all atmo. We don’t need
to breathe it. We need to anchor. When the door opens . . .”

“Blow the window.” He nodded. “I see.”
“The station and planet atmo pressure differential is sizeable,”

she said. “Possibly enough to generate a minor suck zone. The
station’s grav generators keep the Scepter—”

“Enough explanation,” he said. “We’re down to seconds.”
She opened the port shutters, again. He hurried over, slapped

a putty substance along one edge of the viewport. To her unspoken

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92

question, he said, “Seals are less substantial here than the material
they hold together.”

“Get ready.” She jammed the STEEDTest inside her gown,

pulled on her breather mask.

“Drek,” he said, holding his mask between his hands. He held

it up to reveal two messy holes burned clean through.

“Try the kill team’s?”
No good. The collapse had crushed a breather pack. “We’ll have

seconds, right?”

“At most.”
“Enough time to walk out the door,” he said, “and close it.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t like the odds. “But if one thing, anything

goes wrong . . .”

“Spies gamble,” he said. “And we’re out of time.”
Sukikun tethered herself to the wall and then clipped one onto

his belt, too.

“Nice,” he said, tugging on the tether line, “I could think of a

few playtime uses for these.”

“Did I hear you right,” she asked, “when you said you could

be charming?”

“When I want to be,” he said.
“Incorrigible, more like,” she said. Smug, she added. Annoying.

Perhaps attractive in that macho alpha male way. The perfect Im-
perial Seat operator.

The team outside burned the door’s control panel and the door

itself started to swing. Hands entered to pull it further and Makioki

hit his wrist control for the putty bomb. It made a dull whump,
no louder than a 5-kilo bag of flour dropped a meter in an Earth-
type gravitational field. Then, the window ripped clean out and
the suck zone pulled at everything in the room.

Scientifically speaking, “suck” was as much of an illusion as

centrifugal force. The laws of physics provided for pushing and
pulling, but not suck. The concept was a guise for differences in
pressure.

No matter the name, the effect was the same. The intense

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pressure change dragged Sukikun and Makioki to the full tether
extension. The kill team in the doorway had no tethers. They flew
through the door and into the room. Makiko dragged himself
along the wall, one step at a time, fighting the pressure war, trying
to pull himself through the open door.

Then the final member of the kill team appeared to block his

way. It clung to the jam in desperation, losing the war an inch at
a time. Sukikun slammed an elbow against the figure’s shoulder.

The killer rotated enough to lose its grip. It tumbled into the room,
giving the agents a clear exit.

They pulled their way into the corridor and Sukikun triggered

the shutters. Pressure restored enough for them to untether and
run.

As with most espionage agents, the key to success was multiple

back up plans and the ability to alter any plan on the fly. Before
they arrived at the secondary rendezvous point, the STEEDTest
beeped completion.

The results: Inconclusive.
“You think,” Makioki asked, “we jostled it too much?”
“We’ll test you again,” she said, “when we’re somewhere safe.”
The secondary site proved to be an unused vending equipment

storage closet. The place was mostly empty, a canned drink palate
along one wall under a padded shipping blanket.

“Thanks for saving my life,” he said. “I owe you.”
“Thumb please,” she said.
He held up his unpricked left digit. The STEEDTest drew its

sample and began purring once more.

“What do you think the Ceti doesn’t want us to know?”

Sukikun asked. “Think they’ve changed sides, or was that kill team
just a mercenary force?”

“I used to ask those same questions,” Makioki said. “I probed

and poked. Then I found out an important truth: The answers can
sometimes drive a mind crazier than not knowing. Sides change
quickly during wartime. Betrayal is a bargaining chip. Now: I
deliver without questions, playing perfect soldier. Perfect agent.”

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She set the STEEDTest on the palate, while he hunkered on the

floor. He stared into the deck plates when he asked, “You ever catch
a surprise look at yourself and discover you’re unhappy with how

you’ve turned out?”

She said nothing.
“I know we all have pain,” he said. “Everyone in the

Undrentine League has been savaged—torn apart and chewed and

spat out. Loss is our rite of passage.” He said, “And sometimes I
think I’ve lost more during the missions than I ever lost before.”

“We’re still alive,” she said. “And all wars end. And afterwards,

we’ll be given the chance to heal.”

His head rotated with robotic precision until his eyes met hers.

“There’s no healing from some wounds. The worst of mine are all
self-inflicted.”

She reached down to cup his chin. “What have they done to

you out there in the Seat?”

“Nothing I didn’t do to myself,” he said. “I fucked people I

loathed to establish my identity. I’ve killed people I favored to
maintain my cover. I’ve fantasized about killing those I loathed but
never got the chance to actually do it. I don’t know that I ever will.”
He rubbed his hands together. The palm only leather gloves made

soft whispers. “I’m kind of glad I’m going home.”

His vulnerability was far more attractive than his bravado. She

reached down and took his hand. Recollections of her mother
floated through her mind as well as all the evils she had performed
for the greater good. Shame left her empty.

She held him until the STEEDTest chirped that it was done. It

was the six note happy song—no contagions, no diseases.

He visibly relaxed and a nervous chuckle spilled from him.

“Thank the Accident!”

She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back. “Stand up,

agent.”

He stood and she kissed him again. No lozenge exchange, no

mission orders. This was something else. This was personal.

“Adrenaline can play tricks,” he said. “Fool a brain into

thinking—”

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“Shut up,” she said, “and kiss me, you damned idiot.”
He followed orders pretty well.
She ran her hands along the garments, pulling them open to

bare his chest. He undressed her, as well, his leather palm-only
gloves smooth on her skin.

“I want to fuck everything away,” she whispered between

heavy breaths, “The mission, the past and the pain. Make me forget

for a moment and I’ll do the same for you.”

He mighty arms wrapped around her, lifted. She was

weightless as a kitten to him. She wrapped her legs around his
waist, pressing her still hidden sex against his bulge. Through two
layers, she could feel the strain of his hard-on. Stout as a dirk. She
longed to sheath him.

While they kissed, Makioki set her upon the palate. Worries

vanished when his gloves and boots slapped onto the floor. She
unzipped her knee high boots and sent them to join his discards.
When his broad hands undid the buttons on her tight trousers and

then peeled them down, revealing her denuded sex, her sweat
shining legs. She shivered, delighted when he drew his fingertips
across her thighs, light touches creating sparks along her nerves.

She caught his face between her hands and pulled him into

another kiss. His tongue dipped into her mouth and she sucked
on it, envisioning other parts she would like to do the same with.

When the kiss broke, she saw his pants were undone. A quick

tug and bend sent these and his underwear—such a silly lad,
wearing multiple layers!—pooling around his ankles. He stepped
and kicked until he was free. His cock was a lovely sight, bobbing
like an impatient conductor’s baton while he kicked off those
troublesome pants. It curved toward the left, the shaft and glans
flushed to near purple with desire. She reached down, took it to
hand, and stroked. He remained stock still, like a cat picked up by
the scruff of the neck, his mouth open, his breaths uneven.
Hesitant.

The skin of that cock felt soft against her palm, warm. She

stroked, smiling at the slit, as though it might smile back. It was a
powerful cock. Stout enough to rob her of her worries, to focus

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her for a moment on nothing but life. When such a cock got done
with her, why she would certainly be cleared out.

Yes.
“Come to me,” she whispered. Her sex was so wet she was

surprised it wasn’t slobbering.

He did not fuck her immediately, pausing to produce a condom.

“If you want it,” he said, “we can say fuck the protocols.”

“Fuck me instead,” she said. She traced fingers in circles around

her clit, and then dipped between the moist labia, extracting the
honey with her fingertips.

He watched for a time and dropped the condom onto his discards

and then pumped his cock with two bold strokes. He leaned in, and
she spread to receive him. The head of his cock rubbed against her
sex, and then slipped slowly inside.

So filling, that head. He did not ram fully home, choosing to slip

in an inch at a time. His lips and tongue and teeth worked on her

throat, tickling that sweet place where neck meets shoulder, tickling,
raising goosebumps. His hands massaged her breasts, exploring the
circumference and teasing her nipples with light brushes.

She clutched his strong arms, moved up to his shoulders.

Squeezed with every rough inch of him. In and out, in and out, a
wonderful tease. She beckoned him further, deeper, faster.

The heat and sensations soon grew unbearable. The head of his

cock plunged steadily deeper, but she wanted more. Always more. It
had been so long, too damned long.

“All the way,” she demanded. Her following “Please” twisted into

a hiss, when he withdrew, paused and then slammed home. Then,
he turned from reverential worship at the altar between her thighs
to a rowdy bacchanal. His cock pounded into her, their bodies

slapping like mounting applause. His lips and tongue gave way to
teeth and his hands crushed. She moaned and writhed as the rutting
nearly blew all sense from her skull. Thoughts collapsed into
simplicity. Color and sound and touch.

He leaned back then, taking her by the ankles and drawing her

legs wide, his muscles taut as steel when he spread her. He continued

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pounding, composing all new rhythms of pleasure upon the waiting
sheets of her desire. She drew her nails down his chest in short, sharp
strokes and then turned to crushing his nipples between thumbs and

pointer fingers knuckles.

“Fuck me,” she ordered, “Harder. Harder. Harder.” His strokes

slowed in speed but grew in strength. Every entry was as stirring as
a boulder thrown into a pond. Her body jolted with each thrust.

His body ran with rivers of salty sweat, which rained upon her

own sweaty figure. Each thrust drove her closer to release. Her litany
of demands grew increasingly vulgar, the words making little sense
beyond their singular existence.

Was she calling him Daddy? Was she demanding vengeance? Was

she insulting him and demanding a blood price? She had done any
and all of these things with earlier seductions, causing her past lovers
all manner of distress.

Makioki’s face betrayed no emotion, only empty stoicism. Still he

fucked her. And she found she loved it. Savored every powerful thrust,
as climax loomed before her. When the fires of release washed her
clean, she moaned. Her hands clawed the shipping blanket, her back
arched, and a flood of cum washed over his strong, beautiful cock.

Still, he pounded, every motion sending mind shattering

aftershocks ripping through her. His eyes were pinched shut, his
mouth a tight line. His face was the color of exertion near climax.
Still he pounded. Faster, now. Harder, now. Her mind was electric and
her arms flailed. Her body was completely out of control, and yet he
would not, not... not stop.

He seized up, his eyes snapping open. Grunted. Inside her, she

felt his cock twitch and buck, felt his fluids flooding her. And then...
his shoulders relaxed. She was halfway to a second climax. “Don’t
stop,” she whispered, “don’t you dare.”

He pulled out and knelt to the task. His tongue was a wonder,

looping around her clit. This sent her head spinning a second time,
caught the breath in her throat. Force pushed it from her lungs, up
and out her mouth. Force drew new breaths down.

His fingers found her, then. A pair of them sliding into her sex,

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all the way. Curling into her g-spot, sending fresh torrents of
pleasure flooding through her. A finger on his second hand probed
her further down, slipping into her asshole and out again. Sexual
symphonies sang inside her, and she crested on them, rising
higher and higher, like a bird taking flight until—

His tongue flicked her clit and both hands worked her beyond

the brink. She gagged on her own saliva, as she bucked in
pleasure’s throes. Light and love and fulfillment flowed through
her, washing everything beyond concern.

As she lay in the afterglow, she longed for something to

complete the emotional vacuum. She pulled him to her chest, and
he held her.

Inside her, the data file awaited extraction. Whatever it held,

she knew it could not be as important as this shared moment. Their
two wounded souls and hardened bodies met in a way that fit.

They did not quite complete each other, not the way the poems
and songs promised, but they fit.

They trembled together, and before she knew it she was crying.
“They killed my mother,” Sukikun said. “She could be a bitch

and she could be my friend. She could be a lot of things, but she
was always my mother. And they killed her.”

“My wife,” Makioki said. “My babies. Burning.”
They wept together.
Minutes later, the cold and needy world of facts pulled them

apart. Missions needed completion, and a man had to return home
for a time. They did not say goodbye, they did not make promises
neither of them could keep. They dressed and then touched palms.

And then they parted, passing from each other’s life. Perhaps

forever, perhaps not.

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He woke to the sound of a handcuff closing, that undeniable and
unyielding click of metal which there would be no use fighting
against.

Correction—it was a leg cuff.
One of two pairs.
He didn’t remember sleeping that soundly, but there he was,

spread-eagled on the bed, unable to move. Even as he struggled
awake, he felt pressure as someone knelt on the top of the mattress
and used his own movements to deftly press a gag into his mouth
and wrap the strap around the back of his head.

He opened his eyes to a view of breasts and nipples and pale

skin with freckles leaning over him.

“Be careful what you ask for,” she said. “You might get it. In a

way you don’t expect.”

She crawled back down the bed to his left side and he noticed

she had a knife, one of those little flip-open Spyderco pocket
knives, in her right hand.

“I bought this knife when I was afraid of someone else,” she

commented drily.

She flipped it open and the heavily serrated edge gleamed

against the near-darkness of the shades being drawn against bright
sun.

“But I haven’t had to use it against anyone.” She paused. “Until

now.”

He had been sleeping in just a T-shirt and underwear due to

the heat. She grabbed the fabric near his throat and with quick,
ripping motions, severed the front of it down to his waist. The
short sleeves she cut across over his biceps and flipped away as

well so that the shirt lay splayed open on the sheet, mimicking his
vulnerability.

Knife, Gun, High Explosive

Reina Delacroix

She ran a flat hand over his chest, her own skin slippery with

sweat, looking at him but saying nothing.

Then she straddled him, facing away from him and leaning

forward to cut the underwear off his stomach and legs with
agonizing carefulness, two short tears and one long one, avoiding
any possibility of slipping and injuring either one of them.

He had a very good view of her from the rear that way, and he

realized she was doing that deliberately without expecting him to
be able to do anything about it. A bubble of wetness leaked out of
her pussy just a couple inches away from his chin, and the scent
of juice and sweat slowly flooded him, more intense than normal
since he could only breathe through his nose. For once, though,
he felt less longing to be doing something and more a sense of
relief; there was nothing he could do but lie there.

She ran her hand over his stomach in the same way she had

his chest, as if preparing him for something.

And then she leaned farther over and ran her tongue down the

front of his half-hard cock to the base, with the same slow pace as
she had used the knife earlier to cut cloth. He twitched his hips in
reaction, unable to see what she was doing but feeling hotter and
harder every second as he stiffened erect.

She stopped and leaned upwards, and he felt her draw the cold

back edge of the weapon across his stomach, then hold it flat with
a light pressure against his belly.

“Don’t move,” she added.
He froze, desire and fear battling in his head.
“If I wanted you active, I would have left you free to act. Just

as if I wanted you to talk, I would have left you free to speak.” Her
voice wasn’t harsh or angry, more the long-suffering patient
firmness of someone who is, finally, fed up.

“There is one thing you do have to do, though,” she added

more softly but no less firmly, and he felt her left hand cupping
his balls in a weighing, assessing manner. He strained not to react
too strongly in either need or fear, and the strain came out instead
in a soft groan that was half-strangled by the gag.

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“Exactly,” she murmured, and while her face was invisible her

voice sounded like she was smiling. “I’m tired of having sex in
silence, you see.”

She tilted forward again, sliding her left hand back up to circle

his cock and pull upwards, teasing him. “I may have taken away
the words so you can’t put me off, or talk yourself out of it, or
otherwise try to get control of the situation. But that doesn’t mean
I’m not listening to what you want. You do want this, right?”

Her right hand was still pressed against his stomach along with

the flat of the open knife, and he was aware that he must not move.
His assent came out in a plaintive, smothered sob.

“Perfect. Now whimper and beg and plead all you want, Van,

and I’ll make you come. But remember—if you stop making noise,
I’m going to stop. And then where will you be?”

Lying here hot, longing, and lonely, he thought. Like so often

these days. Except not able to do anything about it myself. Yes, I
want this. I need this.

He told her so, a long anticipating sigh of surrender.
Her lips covered him, sliding down him fiercely so the head

hit the back of her throat. She had a small mouth, so the fit was
tight and wet, and she sucked him with a willingness and expertise
that told him how much she enjoyed doing it. Occasionally she
would pull back and just trail the top or bottom of her tongue
over and around the glans to make him shiver, or grasp the shaft
in her left hand and stroke it using her saliva as lubricant. But he
knew her right hand always remained where it was, clenched on
the knife, and as yet uninvolved.

At first his moans were soft and rhythmic, more like loud

breathing from his diaphragm, but as his control started to dissolve
and his tension built towards orgasm they got shallower and more
erratic. He struggled to pull himself back from thrusting—from
moving—and then one long scream forced itself out as he came
in a hot, almost painful spurt.

The gag turned the noise into a high-pitched squeal, like an

animal caught in a trap.

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Drained, he stopped to catch his breath and let his mind clear,

closing his eyes to savor the exhaustion spreading through his
limbs. He felt her shift away from straddling him, and her weight
left the bed.

In a minute she was back kneeling at his side, but a touch of

clothing had replaced the contact of bare flesh against his. A key
clicked, first in the left leg cuff, then the circlet around the left
wrist, and the restraints fell open.

Before he could get up energy to react, there was a jingle of

silver dropped into his left hand—a key on a ring. He opened his
eyes and turned his head barely fast enough to see the flash of the
short coral dress clinging to her back and ass as she strode out the
bedroom door.

The front door slammed a moment later, and weakly he started

to reach across with the key toward the other handcuff to unlock

it. Then he froze.

The knife still lay across his stomach, locked open, blade and

handle both glistening with sweat, saliva, semen, and juice.

t

In the back of an anonymous white van overcrowded with
surveillance equipment, one observer slipped off his headphones
and struggled to keep his voice professional. “We’ll have to keep
an eye on these two, but....”

The other observer steadfastly kept her gaze on her computer

without once looking at him. “Yeah, I think HSHQ got bad intel
on this one. This couple broke up months ago; this just sounds like
she’s acting out some kind of kinky revenge fantasy rather than
anything serious.”

He nodded, desperately glad that the ledge of molded plastic

holding his own computer also hid his painfully-compressed
erection. “Listen, you want to drive to the next location? I’ll stay
back here and do my notes.” Among other things.

“Sure, glad to.” In fact, she was more than glad to get out of

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the close quarters with him. Maybe she could stop at a gas station
and lock herself in the bathroom for a couple of minutes. The way
she felt, it wouldn’t take very long.

t

He got the note in the mail that same afternoon. Unsigned, no
return address, just a sheet of unlined white paper with upright
handwriting in dark red ink.

The only words on it were, “I have another one.”

t

He waited five days before he responded. As the sun set on another
stifling day, he drove into the small commercial park, past an open
warehouse with several men loading rugs into a rental truck, past
scuba gear storage, kitchen & bath fixtures, and a “For Rent” sign,
and finally parked at the end of the row, next to a chain link fence
dividing the facility from an open field.

He slid along the narrow passage between the fence and the

building to come out next to the other side of the warehouse
building, with one very small and one very large rental unit
fronting on a similar but empty parking lot. The smaller one,
which bore a drab olive sign announcing “Camp Surplus,” the
name of her outdoors equipment business, had an alphabetic
keyless entry lock. The brushed satin nickel of the nubs bearing
the letters was cool under his fingertips as he punched in the code:
IHAO, the first letters of the note she had sent him.

The figures clicked and he was in. He caught a glimpse of

inventory boxes for her stacked to various levels, some dusty and
dented but others square and new, as he stepped quickly inside.
The steel door shut hard behind him, like a jail without bars. Then
there was total darkness, and silence.

He began to wait, anticipating what he was going to say. And

do. To her.

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104

And then he realized that it wasn’t totally silent. He became

conscious of the sound of breathing that wasn’t his own just before
there was a couple of shuffling steps, and a body pressed itself
against his back, snaking an arm around to press a blade flat against
his neck. Not yet threatening, but warning.

“I told you I had another one,” she murmured.
He nodded, trying to relax in preparation for his next move.

“But I came anyway.”

“But was that clever of you, or stupid?” She shifted weight a

little, since her arm was awkwardly craned over his shoulder. The
blade came away from his neck just enough for him to grab her
wrist, twist around while spinning, and apply enough pressure to
force her to drop the knife. It clattered on the concrete near his
feet, and he swept his foot across to kick it away.

“I try to learn from my past mistakes,” he replied, and used

the leverage on her arm to shift her bent-over body to face him.
Her face was at the level of his groin, and he deliberately continued
to raise and twist so that she ended up brushing her cheek against

his distended fly.

There was a catch in her voice as she asked, “Is that a gun in

your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

Then she felt a second bulge and froze. He pulled the revolver

out of his pants and stroked her face with the barrel, as gently as
if he’d been wiping tears away. “Yes to both, actually.”

“Except that you don’t actually see me.” It was almost a laugh.

“Once a metaphor for our relationship, now just a simple physical
fact.”

He pressed the gun against the side of her head, pushing her

face into the front of his pants. “I don’t need to see you to hear
you—or feel you. And on that note, I have two simple physical
facts for you right now.”

Her voice was getting less fearful as they kept talking. “Really?

Which are?”

“One, you’re going to spread your legs for me.”
“I am? And two?”
“Two, I have a gun.”

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He wondered if he heard a smile in her voice as she answered,

“Yes. You do have a gun.” Cautiously, he backed her into a corner,
waiting to feel a solid part of her body bump again cardboard
before releasing her arm.

“By the way, I have a fact for you, too,” she stated flatly, her

voice moving as she straightened up.

“What’s that?”
“I’m also tired of having sex in darkness,” she grumbled, and

a light went on.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust from blindness, and he

half-expected her to rush him and try to push him out of the way
in an attempt to escape.

Instead, he saw her leaning back against a shelf of boxes,

thrusting her hips forward, watching him, daring him. Her eyes
darted from his crotch to the gun, and then up to his face. She was

holding a 3-cell Maglight in her left hand, and he realized that she
could easily have hit him with the heavy aluminum casing to
defend herself.

Instead, she propped it on a lower box so the beam played over

her lower body like a focused footlight. Leaning back further, the
skirt she wore parted folds as her knees parted underneath, glimpses
flashing between black fabric and white flesh, and she slipped off a
pair of scarlet red panties and dropped them on the floor.

He used the gun to shift the skirt higher so she was fully

exposed and then slid it down between her thighs to open her
wider as he stepped forward. He reached out his left hand and
pushed a finger into her cunt, then two. She was getting wet like
a river, and he stroked her clit with his thumb in a slow, teasing
circle, then rubbed up and down even more slowly.

She arched her back, pushing against him, bucking her hips as

he ground his fingers in further, and moaned so softly it was more
like a suggestion of a sigh.

He immediately slid his left hand out of her and moved the

gun forward so the round barrel slid in instead, right up to the
trigger guard which he rotated up to face her clit.

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Her eyes opened wide to look down at the cold weight, and

she held her breath and did not move as the LED light glinted off
the pearl and steel of the grip.

He jammed it in deeper. “Make all the noise you want, Ada.

No one else can hear you.”

And he easily slid his right index finger into her ass while

keeping the palm of his hand pressing against the butt of the gun.
He began to rock her whole pelvis back and forth by thrusting in
and out of both holes, sometimes in alternation and other times
in unison. She moaned more and more vehemently as her
automatic hip movements took over where his weapon-and-
finger-fucking left off. Repeatedly and loudly she shrieked as she
came, until he crammed the fingers of his left hand inside of her
mouth and it became more of a long, sustained whimper of
release.

She could barely move after all that, barely perceive him pull

out, back away, and leave.

She didn’t feel empty, though. He had left the gun, its metal

now warm to the touch, inside her.

All the chambers were loaded.

t

In the backing unit sporting the “For Rent” sign, one observer was
glad they had remained in darkness throughout the scene they had
just overheard. She’d ended up rubbing herself through her own
clothing and now her underwear was a sticky mess, but she’d been
wearing thick, loose blue jeans for their current covers as
maintenance workers and hoped they would cover it long enough
for her to get home. “What do you think?” she asked her partner
as she removed the headphones.

His voice betrayed nothing, he hoped, struggling to be matter

of fact and not show that he wanted desperately to stroke himself
until he came. “So far, nothing but two people having sex. Pretty
crazy sex, but sex.”

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“People do that, you know.” She paused, wondering if she

dared give him a hint of what she was thinking—fantasizing.
“Even in today’s world.”

“I’m beginning to agree with your opinion that there’s nothing

going on here but fantasy. Even if they do both contribute heavily
to liberal causes and he got arrested in a protest march back in
March, I don’t see anything going on that warrants us watching
this couple so closely.”

You’re not seeing much of anything right now, she thought

with bitter amusement. “Well, I’ll write up our latest report with
that analysis, but you know HSHQ is so paranoid they’ll probably
have us keep watching them rather than miss anyone who might
actually be a spy or terrorist.”

t

She got the note in the mail the next afternoon. Unsigned, no
return address, just a sheet of unlined white paper with upright

handwriting in dark red ink—and a faint scent of gun oil.

The only words on it were, “I have another one, too.”

t

They met without a reservation in a cheap high-rise hotel on the
west side of town, one of the old dockworkers’ flophouses that
had been tarted up with neo-Victorian furnishings just before the
crash. Room 1212 was chock-full of frosted glass and flowered
chintz and a jumble of dusty bronze aspidistra sprawling on all
levels from floor to ceiling. There was a black telescreen, which
didn’t work, at the foot of the bed, and a single dome light, which
did, poised over the headboard like a spotlight.

He sat, completely naked, on the edge of the wrought-iron

bed, waiting for her to come.

A key ratcheted in the door, and she slipped in like a spy in an

antique movie. Seeing that he was already on the bed, she paused

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108

in front of him, eying him coolly, and finally murmured, “No knives
and no guns, I see. So where are we now? Who are we now?”

His eyes challenged her in turn. “Take your armor off, and let’s

find out.”

She kicked off her sandals, stripped the thin red-and-white top

over her head and dropped her shorts in a manner more efficient
than seductive. He watched her, feeling his erection grow simply
from the sight of her body and memories of the past, but he made
no move until she faced him, hands on hips as she braced herself for
whatever came next.

He stood up opposite her, leaned forward, and kissed her as gen-

tly as he could manage. At first touch her lips were cool and smooth,
tasting faintly of chrysanthemum tea, and for a moment he thought
she might pull away, but then her hands came up to cup his face and
she too leaned forward, only their mouths meeting at the top of an
arch, a slight parting and touching and then twining of tongues as
they kissed with longing, with lingering—with love.

Her eyes were open as she leaned back, one hand hesitantly

against his cheek but her whole body trembled like a butterfly about
to take flight rather than risk the net, and the killing bottle. He cov-
ered her hand with his own, but did not hold or grab, simply nested
it against his face.

“How do you love, when all you’ve known is anger and fear?”

she breathed.

“I think you see the other person,” he answered, “and you hear

what they have to say, and you watch and listen.”

“You do?”
“I do.”
She shivered. “And what do you do next?”
“You deal as best you can with the anger and the fear.”
She nodded. “They’re still there, you know.” She took his hand

away from his face and brought it down to rest on the plate of bone
between her breasts, letting him feel the irregular and agonized
thumping of her heart underneath her ribs.

His thumb continued to press against her center as his fingers

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and palm slid sideways, moving into a stroke and then very slow
squeeze of her breast. She took a sudden deep breath, pressing herself

further into his hand, feeling the pain of the pressure mingle with
the pleasure of receiving such direct, plain touch.

“Yes, they’re still there,” he acknowledged, kneading and

squeezing harder as she leaned into it rather than backing away. “But
there’s love there, too. However you get to it, it’s there.”

He took hold of her other hand and pressed it to his own chest

so she could feel his own heart hammering in sympathy with hers.
She splayed her hand across his muscles, and slowly dug her
fingertips in as if it would somehow save herself from falling any
further right then. He winced slightly, but did not try to stop her.
Instead, he brought up his other hand to cup her other breast and
then began to fondle and squeeze that in turn, kneading the mounds

together and upwards, tweaking the nipples as he leaned forward to
kiss her again.

t

In the room next door was a duplicate of the other room in layout
and content. Notified that another envelope bearing her handwriting

arrived in his morning mail, the observers had followed his trail to
the hotel. Check-in at the front desk and waiting for a single working

elevator had delayed his arrival at the room just long enough for their
technical crew to rig the telescreen and light fixture in Room 1212
for both audio and video recording. However, there wasn’t enough
time or equipment to set up fully individual surveillance stations for
the observers.

The telescreen in 1214 didn’t work either, so the man and the

woman were crowded together on one side of the bed, trying not to
touch each other at shoulders and hips, watching a portable tapscreen
and straining to hear the conversation on the tiny speakers.

They saw the woman pull the man towards her with a

fierceness that left red welts on his chest. They saw the man pull
the woman down onto the bed, bodies becoming so entwined

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with kisses and touches it was hard to tell through the tiny display
where his body stopped and hers started.

But as the sound of thrusting began, they distinctly heard her

say, “I love you.”

And his response, audible between the rhythmic thumping,

was, “I love you too.”

The one observer turned to the other. “Do you think—” he

started, and then stopped. She was staring at the screen, a tear
escaping down her cheek. “What’s the matter?”

She pointed. “Why are we doing this? Why are we obsessively

watching these two people who are just trying to live their lives?
What’s wrong with this picture?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure myself. HSHQ was so certain

they were subversive... and their relationship clearly violates the
Rules of Morality, so technically at this point we should report it
and let the system take over... yet it seems like all they really are is
lonely.”

“And in love,” she added bluntly, turning her full face to his.
He blinked, surprised. In the three years they’d worked

together in Surveillance, just out of school, she’d never looked
straight into his eyes before. They’d always been trained that
meeting someone’s gaze was a direct invitation to... he tried
anxiously to stop that pattern of thought, and instead found
himself blurting out something almost as treacherous. “You really
believe that, Vera? You believe in love? After all that’s happened? In
our world?”

“I believe they do. You said it yourself—in our world. Would

you do what they’re doing, risk what they are risking, for anything
less than love?”

“They can’t know we’re watching them.”
“They can’t assume they’re not being watched by someone,

somewhere. Again, as you so clearly state, not in our world of
today.” She paused and bit her lip, still not dropping her eyes. “Are
you going to turn them in, Miri?”

Her questions were burning him almost as much as her eyes

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were. He looked away, and his eyes fell on the tapscreen showing
that the couple in 1212 lay together, spent, silent, content, her
head on his shoulder and his hand stroking her hair.

Insistent, she repeated, “Are you? Can you?”
He looked back at her in turn, seeing the streaks of salt in her

face and the rise of fear behind her eyes as she challenged him
to...

He reached across and put his finger on the tapscreen, bringing

up the menu and the red button labeled Report. “Agent Mike-One-
Seven-Victor reporting in on Casefile X-ray-One-Two. Surveillance
equipment installation was defective and we were unable to
observe latest meeting of subjects.” He paused, and went on,
hoping his voice did not sound as nervous as he felt. “Recommend
our team continue surveillance of subject meetings as necessary,
but only until we can absolutely confirm or deny that the subjects
are not a threat to national security.”

He shut off the Report feature, changed controls to delete the

surveillance recording and send the report alone, and turned back
to his partner. “I hope I did the right thing, Vera.”

“I think you did,” she stated, eyes bright with unshed tears that

she turned away to hide. “You know, I signed up to protect people
from terror. Not to cause more of it to innocents.”

“Hardly innocents,” he protested, remembering the knife, and

the gun, and the anger. “But yes, I’m giving them a chance to be
together.”

“Yes, at least they’re getting a chance.” Hey voice was choked,

husky, possibly because of the tears she was fighting with. “But
what about us? What chance do we have?”

So maybe that look, that gaze had not just been... yet he spoke

cautiously, still fearing a trap. “Us? I’ve always thought we were in
this together—more than ever, now that we’ve just lied to HSHQ.”

“We’re together every day, Miri. And every day I see you—I

think about how much I’ve always admired you and respected you,
and how well we work together—and yet... I am lonely, too.” Her
eyes came back to his again, and this time the sense of invitation

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112

was unmistakable, as well as the knowledge that her confession was
changing everything between them in some fashion. “But I always
assumed you would think it was wrong—that I was wrong.”

He nodded, realizing that he needed somehow to reach out past

his own fear, shame and confusion. “Because of the Rules... and other
things. I’ve always been glad you were my partner too, that we fit
together so well, that I found I could trust you. But I never thought
of you... I never wanted... no, that’s not right, I never knew what I
wanted. Not the way they do, certainly.”

She blushed. “Well, I don’t think I could want quite the way they

do.”

“Me neither. At least I wouldn’t want to go through the crazy,

angry parts we saw.”

“But I do think I want you. Could you... want me?” she asked,

touching his face with a slightly shaky fingertip.

He smiled. “To quote our subjects: let’s find out.”
Their first kiss was soft, awkward, flat-mouthed. But the only

electric shocks involved were good ones, and they were both smiling
when it stopped.

His hands moved to pull her shirt off, and once that was done,

she extended her hands in turn to unbutton his and remove it. With
some surprise he felt himself stirring, already getting hard as her
fingers fumbled and brushed against his chest and sides.

Their mouths met again as they embraced, more urgently on his

side, more nervously on hers. He wondered if he should open his
mouth any, but decided to let her dictate the pace until she got more
comfortable.

She stroked his back, pressing him to her body, a bit shocked at

how warm she already felt from a few simple kisses and his arms
firmly wrapped around her. Her bra was getting tight, and she started
to reach behind her back to unhook it, but he interpreted her
movements and attempted to do it himself. However, it was clear
from his struggles that he had never tried it before, so she turned her

body sideways to give him a better view and angle. Finally, the hooks
came loose and she breathed a little easier.

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He enjoyed the look of the slight swelling of her breasts in

profile, and even more the sensation of her chest rubbing against
his and the nipples hardening as they kissed a third time.

When they stopped for breath this time, her eyes seemed a bit

dazed and so he asked, a little concerned, “How are you? How do
you feel?”

Her smile was slow, but sure. “Right. I feel... right. You?”
“Very right,” he answered, and his erection grew stronger as

he realized it did feel very right to touch her and hold her. “Do
you want to keep going?”

She leaned back on the bed and held out her arms invitingly.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “I want to go all the way with you.”

t

The man and woman who were observing the observers via the
delayed video feed in Room 1216 regarded each other with weak
smiles of relief. “I thought they’d never do it,” the man said,
shaking his head in amazement as he crossed the room and poured
them both glasses of black-market vodka in celebration.

The woman rubbed her temples with her forefingers,

massaging away the tension of watching. “For a while, I wasn’t
sure either. The so-called therapy administered in government day
care centers and schools to try and minimize children’s feelings
of love or empathy—the ‘shame and pain’ indoctrination sessions
masquerading as ‘optional seminars in correct political thinking’
as they grow older—and the mandates that marriage is only
between a man and a woman and that sex is only for purposes of
procreation, all those messages have become so powerful and
pervasive in the last few years.” She shuddered. “I wonder if either

of us would ever have broken free without help, if the Andrean
Government had controlled our environment as subtly but closely
as it does theirs.”

He walked up behind her and handed her the drink, sliding

one arm around her waist and the other arm around her shoulders.

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114

She leaned back against him with a grateful sigh, “But we did
break free.”

“Yes, and once again we’ve broken someone else loose. As

usual, Marina will contact them in a few days with a copy of the
recording and make it clear to them that they are not alone.” She
gulped from the smoky highball glass, harsh potato alcohol
burning the back of her throat for a moment, savoring one more
victory for the Liberation Front. “Whether they actively join our
side or simply work against HSHQ from the inside like the people
who helped us set this up, at least we’ve won another battle and
weakened their control.”

“Do you want to keep watching?” she asked, motioning to the

plasi-screen where the feed, coming from the “broken” telescreen
of 1214, showed Miri pulling off Vera’s pants and snuggling up
against her after he shed his own.

“No,” he murmured, kissing her neck fondly. “Let’s give them

a little privacy for their first time. Right now, my love,” he added,
sliding his hand under the waistband of her pants and finding her
already wet, “I believe I would rather celebrate our own freedom
by fucking.”

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Everything is known. Everything is written.

The daemon chatters and more words are added to the

endless spool of parchment that spits from its metal guts: / she
walks down Biblio Street into the wind / thinking about sex with Brian /
imagining what his cock would be like inside her / TREASONOUS THOUGHT
/ TREASONOUS THOUGHT / she shivers with cold / she knows she is being
monitored / TREASONOUS THOUGHT / she runs her finger along the scar at
the back of her skull / she stops to check her reflection in the window of Café
Utopia / she feels slightly melancholy but does not know why /

She thinks about sex a lot. Far more than the last woman I

was assigned to. And when she fucks, there is an incredible
urgency to it. Of course, that might just be a function of the
daemon I’m working with now. Not many people outside the
Agency know this, but each machine has its own idiom, its own
literary style, if you will. The public imagines the records to be
exhaustive and utterly objective, but that would be impossible.
Just try it some time and you’ll see what I mean. Try writing
down everything you think and experience, leaving nothing out.
Try to check your subjectivity at the door. You will either grind
to a halt before you begin, or you will find yourself selecting
and filtering and editing.

We are all curators of our experience, and the daemons are

no different. One might focus more on a subject’s thoughts,
another on her sensory experiences; one might over-report
strong emotional reactions, another might over-report barely-
articulated stream-of-consciousness babble.

So perhaps this one is particularly exercised by sex. Perhaps.

But I like to believe it’s her. I like to believe that she feels it more

intensely than other women. And sometimes, when she’s
fucking, I read the words that the daemon spits out and I bring

A Private Moment
Julian Oliver-Fenn

myself off, in my barren little office, to descriptions of her
fucking.

t

She was a person of interest before she was implanted, and we
were suspicious of her even before that. She thinks about that day
sometimes, the day she was arrested. She doesn’t remember it well,
because of the anesthetic, and sometimes she wonders if it was a
dream. But then she feels the scar at the back of her skull and she
knows it is there, inside her head, listening.

t

On Monday morning my supervisor, Mary, came to my office:
“Billy, we have a situation. Elizabeth Peacock is spreading treason.”

“Impossible,” I told her, as I have told her before. “Her head is

full of treasonous thoughts, but she never breathes a word of them
to anyone. She’s a model citizen, in that respect. One of the most
scrupulous I’ve ever worked with.”

“It’s her,” said Mary. “We’re certain of it. We suspect she’s an

anarchist agitator. Just listen to this.” She clutched copies of records
from other daemons on other desks, elsewhere in the Agency’s
vast office complex. “She met one Jeremy Phillips at a café back in
November. She flirted with him, took him home to her
apartment.”

“I remember,” I said. / She pushes herself down onto him fast and hard /

her breathing is jagged / her pleasure comes in waves, swelling and churning inside
her / she is hyperventilating / she says “oh god yes” / she can feel her orgasm rising
in her belly / she can feel him thrusting up into her / into the wetness that fills her
/ she says “don’t stop” / AND SHE STARTS…SHE STARTS TO COME… /

“A casual fling,” I told Mary.
“Jeremy Phillips was implanted at birth,” she replied, looking

annoyed. “He came from a good family. He had a good job. But
since November he has been harboring treasonous thoughts. They
started after he slept with Elizabeth Peacock.”

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“Coincidence,” I said. “I remember that night. They just fucked

and fell asleep. He left early the next morning. He told her he had
to go to work. She had plenty of treasonous thoughts before and
after the sex, but while they were fucking they were all business.
In fact, pretty much the only times she doesn’t think about treason
is when she’s having sex.”

“I know,” said Mary, impatiently. “I’ve read her records. But

there are more examples. Muriel Primrose. Later that same month.”

I thought back to that night: / Another woman’s softness beneath her /

the squash of breasts against breasts / it feels almost too luxurious to her / decadent
/ like desert after desert / she reaches between the woman’s legs and slides her
fingertips against her vulva / HER FINGERTIPS BECOME SLIPPERY/ …
DELIGHTED by this slipperiness / she hears the woman’s breath catch / takes this
as a signal to GO FURTHER / she PUSHES her middle finger into the woman’s
VAGINAL OPENING…just a little way /

“Again, it was nothing but sex,” I told Mary. “Nothing

incriminating happened.”

“She’s quite the slut, isn’t she, your Elizabeth? And you seem

to have a good memory for her encounters.” Mary laughed, un-
kindly, and I felt protective of her, as if she was my lover. “If it was
just sex then why did Muriel Primrose start having treasonous
thoughts as soon as they had finished?”

I shrugged. “They didn’t speak of treason. Elizabeth has never

spoken of treason to anybody for as long as I have been reading
her. Like I said, she seems to be a model citizen. ‘Keep it to yourself
and we can all get along.’ ”

“Don’t quote propaganda at me, Billy,” said Mary. “John

Fanshaw. Bertie Marnak. Peter Goodman. Shannon Finley. All of
them started thinking about treason after having sex with your
Elizabeth Peacock. This is not a coincidence.”

“It’s not a crime to have treasonous thoughts,” I reminded her.

Speaking treasonous words is a crime; distributing treasonous
materials is a crime; making treasonous images is a crime;
performing treasonous gestures is a crime; inciting or
disseminating treason in any way is a crime. But having treasonous

thoughts? We can’t stop that.

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118

“I know the law,” snapped Mary, glaring at me. “Listen to me:

Elizabeth Peacock is spreading treason. We just don’t know how.
And we want you to find out.”

My throat was suddenly very dry. My heart began to race.

“I’m…” I began, but found my tongue had become thick and
clumsy.

“Yes. We’re sending you out. We want you to meet her and find

out how she’s doing it.”

“I don’t know if I can…” I began. Something that was mostly

terror grabbed at my gut, but the terror was cut with something
unfamiliar, an undercurrent of almost unbearable excitement.

“That’s an order, Billy. I wouldn’t have chosen you myself, but

this came from upstairs.” Her eyes darted towards the ceiling.
“You’ve been reading her for two years now. You know her better
than anyone. Befriend her. Gain her trust. Figure out how she’s
doing it. We want proof, and we don’t care how you obtain it.
Once we have that, we can pass things over to the Committee.”

t

Once Mary was gone I felt a compulsion to giggle and scream at
the same time. It was happening at last. I was being sent out on a
mission. This is how I had imagined my job when I first joined
the Agency; this is what I had dreamed about as a child. But over
the years I had grown utterly comfortable working at a desk,
poring over the spools of paper that the daemon spat out. I had
settled into such a state of complacent contentment that I no
longer imagined any other possible life.

And now I was being sent out on a mission. And my mission

was to meet her. Her: the woman whose most intimate thoughts
I had read for the last two years. Her: the woman I had fallen in
love with.

t

She lives in Dutchtown, in a basement apartment with which she

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is mildly dissatisfied. She would like to move, and she knows she
could afford it, but just can’t bring herself to do the leg-work. She
works as a freelance, mid-stream encryptrix. She takes messages
written in one secret code and translates them into another secret
code. This is suspicious activity, but is not illegal, because she can’t
read either of these codes herself and so there is no way to prove
she is transmitting treason. (But then what messages would require
this kind of secrecy, apart from treasonous messages?) She does

this work from home, and in the evenings she goes out to the cafés
to socialize and pick up lovers. She loves the thrill of rapidly
escalating intimacy, the too-fast rush from polite small talk to
brazen sexual overtures. She loves the moment when a man
realizes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’s going to get laid

tonight, the look on his face, the blush-and-grin. She loves to be
daring and outrageous with women. “You know what I’ve always
wanted to try?” is her favourite line, and each time she says it as if
she has never said it before, as if she is taking a breathless risk.

All this I know, but I don’t know what she looks like, because

she never thinks about how she looks in any great detail. Like most
adults, she has so internalized her appearance that she isn’t

consciously aware of it any more, even when she looks in a mirror,
and so her daemon doesn’t describe it. Maybe a more meticulous
daemon would pick up some of it, but not hers.

So I wait for her to come to me, as I know she will eventually.

I know what attracts her to a man; I know the sort of man she
approaches. She likes a man who drinks his espresso black. She
likes a man who reads interesting art magazines, like Systems Weekly
and Bleed Journal. She likes a man who dresses in cheap, rugged
clothes, but does it with some flair and attitude.

So I put on jeans and a flannel shirt, and tie a bright scarf

around my neck. I take the metro to Dutchtown and order an
espresso at Café Utopia, then I bury my nose in a back issue of
Systems Weekly and I wait for her to come to me.

She’s a mystery. That’s why I’m here. The Agency can’t stand

mysteries. Or perhaps it loves them. One or the other. It amounts
to the same thing in the end. She seems to be spreading treason

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120

while doing nothing illegal, and that is very problematic and very
interesting. Having sex with her spawns treasonous thoughts, as if
treason was an STI and she was a carrier.

But I know every detail of every sexual encounter she has had

over the last two years. I have read and—I admit it—reread
descriptions of every thought she has had while fucking,
everything she has felt, every movement she has made, every gasp,
every lick, every orgasm. There is nothing unusual about it, other
than its breathtaking beauty and intensity.

t

“Excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but I can’t help but noticing…
is that the issue with the photos of naked factory workers?”

She’s used that line before. It’s the reason I chose this particular

issue of Systems Weekly. I chose it as bait. I’ve read it cover-to-cover
a dozen times over the last three days, and I’ve drunk so much

espresso that I think I might have given myself an ulcer.

“Why yes it is,” I say. My voice trembles a little as I speak, and

my hands tremble as I put down the magazine. It is not intentional,
but I know she won’t mind. She likes men who are a little shy, a
little nervous at first.

She doesn’t look how I expected. She’s older than I thought

she would be, older than me. The hair behind her ears in greying,
and there are creases around her eyes, but there is also a youthful
radiance about her face, an intensity to her stare that I find very
attractive.

“I loved that issue,” she says. “I often wonder if I would have

had the guts to do that, to strip naked in front of all those total
strangers.” She sits down across the table from me, and plays with
her earlobe as she talks. “I’d like to think I would have. I think I
would have enjoyed it.”

I smile at her, shyly. “I’m not sure, myself,” I say. “I’d like to

become less shy about my body, but I’ve always been a bit…” I
look down and blush. I’ve read conversations almost exactly like

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this one, conversations she’s had with other men. And yet this all
feels very natural. I’m hardly acting.

“You shouldn’t be shy,” she says. “Your body looks very nice

to me. I’m Elizabeth, by the way.” She extends a hand and squeezes

mine in a handshake that lingers a little too long.

t

We go back to her dim, basement apartment, stopping only kiss
for a while, under a lamppost. I tell her I’ve never done anything

like this before, and she tells me she never has either. She’s lying,
of course. When we get to her apartment she opens a bottle of
wine and she sits in my lap on her couch. We take long swigs,
straight from the bottle and kiss each other with red-stained lips.

I want to tell her everything. I want to tell her that I know what

she felt when her best friend was taken away. I want to tell her that
I know that the sound of the ocean brings her close to tears. I want
to tell her that I know what she fantasizes about when she
masturbates. I want to tell her that I know about her insomnia,
and her love of trashy novels and her embarrassment at her
flatulence after eating chili at her uncle and aunt’s house that time.

I want to tell her that I know her as well as she knows herself,

that I have read twenty-five million words of her thoughts, and
that I have fallen in love with her over two years. But telling her

any of that would mean revealing the Agency’s methods, and that
would be treason. It would also creep her the fuck out, so I only
open my mouth to kiss her lips, and fingers, and then later her
bare nipples.

I’m nervous and hesitant throughout. I know exactly what she

likes and how she likes it, but I’m used to reading her reactions
on a printed spool of paper, not on her body. I’m used to having
her desires and pleasures interpreted and described by the
daemon; I’ve never had to interpret them myself. I’m suddenly
disoriented and out of my depth. It is both frightening and
thrilling.

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122

She is not hesitant. She never is. She removes her clothes slowly,

piece by piece, making me wait to see each new part of her, but it
is only to tease me and make me gasp with arousal. She reaches
for my cock with confidence, and she knows just how hard to
squeeze.

For my part, I’m full of questions. Her fucking has always been

linguistic to me, and I need words to reassure me now. “Is this

good?...What do you want me to do?...Is that too hard?...Is this
comfortable?” She laughs at my questions, but she’s good-natured

about it. There have been other men like me, and I know that she
thinks my hesitancy is sweet and endearing.

When I enter her I have all but forgotten my mission. All that

matters is the impossible closeness of our naked bodies and the
great wash of pleasure that is about to break over us.

She is adept at spinning things out. I approach the edge quickly,

but then I hang there as she slows us down, preventing me from
reaching the point of no return, the event horizon of orgasm. She
reaches between our bellies and touches her clitoris, rushing to
catch up with me.

And then she begins to speak. Her voice comes out breathless

and broken with the strain of pleasure, but she speaks fast and with
a wide-eyed seriousness.

“Listen very carefully. I have been implanted, but my comrades

have discovered a secret. While we are this close to orgasm their
daemons cannot hear us. Our words and thoughts are drowned
out by our pleasure. At this moment, and no other, we can speak
in privacy.”

I cannot hold back any longer. Everything that I am rushes

down through my belly, and for a moment it seems that there is
nothing in the universe but my cock and the cunt into which it is
erupting. And as I come she presses her lips close and whispers

treasonous words into my ear.

t

I return to the Agency late that night to make my report. I tell them

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my findings have proved inconclusive thus far and that I need more
time to establish a closer relationship with the suspect.

I don’t know if they believe me. I am, of course, implanted, as

all agents are. Somewhere in the Agency’s Offices there is a daemon
printing my thoughts to a spool of paper, and an agent reading

those thoughts. The Agency will know that I have begun to think
treasonous thoughts. They will not know the specifics, because

communicating the contents of treasonous thoughts is itself
treason, and so the daemons are programmed to exclude those
details. But they will know those thoughts started after I made love

to her. And they will know that I am thinking about her now, full
of love and hope and fear.

t

/ He thinks about the moment of orgasm / that most intimate of moments / that
most private of moments / TREASONOUS THOUGHT / he thinks about what he
will say the next time he makes love to Elizabeth Peacock /

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124

Seph had been carrying anger around in her bones for five years
before being approached, then recruited by Reperio Group to
work intelligence for them. Her oldest brother—her piggyback
rides, her tree-climbing booster, her holiday cookie thief
accomplice, her spare change dispenser at festival markets, her bear

hugs after nightmares and awards—was murdered feet away from
her on their town green, and Seph had been worried and sure that

she would never feel anything again but vengeful.

It was in the middle of a late spring day. She was with her

oldest brother and her younger brother. They had been walking
home from a Saturday stroll around the shopping district. As had
become recent custom, they bowed their heads when passing a

pair of the occupying soldiers stationed at the intersection of the
shops’ street and one of the streets forming the side of the town
square. When they had reached the grass and started to cross the
square, her oldest brother turned back to the soldiers and shouted,
“Look alive, boys! I’ve just seen chairs that could do your job! And
with nicer legs!” A bullet whipped through him just above his
eyebrows. Seph heard her younger brother scream. No one else
dared.

Things had been getting especially tense between the people

of Dweryslo and these soldiers from Belliskray, which had once
been a friendly neighbor country before its war for independence
from its motherland. Refugees from this neighbor had been
welcome, but when soldiers came they did not meet with a similar
reception. Nobody on either side believed that they were here as

“an advanced protective measure for an allied state.”

They started out as acting like and being regarded as

buffoonish security guards, stopping you to ask you why you were
out after dark, or even what you just bought at the bakery or the

Giving Up The Spook

Max Erica Scott

butcher’s. But the ever extending length of their stay began to tire
both sides, the Belliskray soldiers further aggravated by the
boredom of their post in such a tiny, rural place so far from home,
their perceived futility and impotence in maintaining this post

when their comrades were in actual combat, and the fact that their
country was not even faring well in its war. Incidents of soldiers
verbally harassing, or even striking blows on Dweryslo residents,

for imagined offenses or even no reason, were becoming common
and commonly known.

So Seph was not surprised that her brother’s comment was

taken so personally, or even that it was taken so personally and
reprimanded with some form of physical violence. But the grossly
disproportionate punishment of a killshot to the head for the teasing of
invading forces imposing their guard on a neighborhood corner,
was an injustice that ripped at her nerves so hard it felt like her
skin would catch fire. The only thing that made her halt her second

oldest brother from marching out of their house to return the
favor with their father’s gun that night, was the concern for her
parents and younger siblings, and herself, that another kid in the
family would be lost. Not that she would even have the luxury of
family for much longer.

After the very public killing of her brother, whenever soldiers

pushed residents, residents pushed back. Many even attacked
soldiers first, some in honor of Seph’s brother, and some just used
him as a good excuse to finally retaliate for everything done wrong
against them as people and country.

“Allied state” became police state, and it was a short matter of

time before the adults were rounded up for conscription into the
war, the children were shipped off to military schools to await

their turn for a similar fate, if the fighting lasted that long, and
Dweryslo as anyone knew it was dissolved.

Seph, at age 14, was to be sent to school, being a year shy of

the Belliskray enlistment age. When asked for her name so she
could be recorded and stamped, she gave them her oldest brother’s

first name with her last name: Joseph Kitko. The man in uniform

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making the list on his tablet twisted his lips. He was a regional
station, then. As riotous as Dweryslo’s rebellion had been, not
everyone in Belliskray knew about it. Civilian or service member.
It was regarded as a scandal, a failed operation, bad for morale.

And while the soldiers who’d been stationed in or within a 50-
mile radius of her country couldn’t tell one of its citizens from

another, couldn’t’ve told you a common or popular name among
those citizens, they all knew the name “Joseph Kitko”. What man
it had belonged to, what it meant and what it had caused.

The uniform tried to put down this rebellion too.
“Joseph? Strange name for a girl,” he said.
Seph didn’t reply, just continued to meet his glare, unafraid.

She would take her brother’s name and live for him. Keep him
alive in spite of them. And she would take on his voicelessness as
well by refusing to speak, aside from answering her name as being
his. She would represent him. She wouldn’t let him be pushed

away and forgotten—a skeleton in a closet. She would not let him
be gone.

The uniform narrowed his eyes until they were almost shut,

and asked for her name again.

“Joseph Kitko,” she repeated.
“I doubt that that is actually your name, miss, please give me

your name.”

“Joseph. Kitko.”
“Young woman, give me your name.”
“Joseph Kitko.”
“If you—” he paused, took a breath. He would take a different

tack. She was standing in a line, flanked by tens of her fellow
nationals on either side of her shoulders. He wouldn’t engage her
further, wouldn’t indulge her and inspire the others to be insolent.
He would ignore this. Ignore the importance of Joseph Kitko. Of
his importance to Dweryslo. Ignore Dweryslo, because it was a
country that no longer existed anyway. He would diminish her,
and therefore her threat. He relaxed his eyes and face into a look
of calm. He lips formed a small smile.

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“If you insist, dear, that must be your name. Very well.” He

didn’t speak the name out loud himself as he recorded it, as he
had with all the other names so far. But it was recorded, so that
anyone who scanned the bar code they would later tattoo to her
forearm would be brought to her data page, Joseph Kitko the heading

at the top.

So she became Joseph Kitko. And proved to be quite an

adequate fighter in an army she loathed. Her years on various

community sports teams had given her stamina, and strength in
her upper body and legs, making humping a rifle and a backpack
full of gear through the woods and around the outskirts of cities
just a chore instead of a challenge. And she could sling that rifle
with the mediocre of them, for while her aim was not sniper-
worthy she always made a hit somewhere on the body, because
every target and person she shot through was that soldier on the
corner. The bruises beat into her shoulder from the butt of the gun
when it recoiled felt more like pats on the back, from her brother,

from herself, for trying so damn hard all the time. For fighting.
Even if not quite in the way she wanted to.

She only had to wait a few years for Reperio Group to step in

and offer her a more preferable outlet.

t

Seph had been on a 24-hour liberty pass and crept off for a rare
night out all to herself. Usually she was content enough to follow
her teammates, who on liberty nights doubled as their
commander’s entourage, to the local straight bar/dance club. She’d
slip into a booth and watch them all scatter into the dark, seeking
drinks, dates, and an open space on the dance floor. She served as
their checkpoint—they would report back to her when they
needed to catch their breath or a brief respite from rejection before
stepping back out and trying their lines and smiles on a new
mark.  Even Commander Grasmus himself frequently plopped
beside her into the booth and enlisted her help with acquiring

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targets. And as much fun as it was to help her commander pick
out his hookups for the night, and pick them out for him even
better than he could, Seph relished time to just look for herself.
Luckily for her, they were stationed at the base where they
completed basic training—their home base, if they could be
considered as having one, given how much wandering they did—

so she was very familiar with the entertainment options available

and already had a favorite place to head to.

Zaychicks was a bar with warm-colored wooden floors, tables,

and bar surface, making the room appear brighter without having
to turn the overhead lighting all the way up. Pink, red, and blue
lights swept the dance floor, which always held about half the
crowd of girls, and green glass lamps hung over each of the pool
tables in a darker corner. Seph always watched the games, and
maybe one or two of the players, with a certain longing, but she
had never quite worked up the courage to try and insert herself
into that particular scene of the bar. There was the bar itself, wide
and U-shaped and always with just about every stool full, and just
beyond it was the doorway to the darker and more intimate
lounge.

Seph seated herself in the left front corner of the bar, her spot

when she could claim it, because it allowed her to observe all the
action without having to be right in the middle of it, turning and
turning her head around until her neck hurt. Out of a sense of
wanting to always maintain control, and because she doubted what

little pay she was allowed to carry could actually buy something
strong enough to be worth it if she changed her mind, she always

ordered ice water, so she wasn’t exactly the bartenders’ favorite
customer. But she always smiled, tipped, and never caused a scene,
so while she wasn’t the most profitable customer, she was at least
a kind and an easy one, and the bartenders did appreciate that. They

smiled whenever they saw her, fetched her order right away.

After gulping down a few mouthfuls of cold water, letting the

ice slide down the glass to press against her upper lip, and then
setting the drink down with a sigh, Seph began her usual rounds.

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Dance floor—Dresses? How many? Colors? Lengths? Other outfits?
Who can actually dance tonight? And who looks good just trying?
Pool tables—Butches? Femmes? Tattoos? Good tattoos? Any trick
shooters tonight or just straight corner-pocket skills? A short scan
to the lounge—Anyone headed there yet? Who?

Seph was pretty strictly a crowd watcher. She never really looked

at anyone in particular, never locked eyes. But on this night Seph kept
catching glances with a curly-haired girl sitting on the corner of the
bar directly across from her; she showed up in Seph’s line of sight
whenever she’d look over to the lounge entrance. Well, it wasn’t so
much catching glances as it was that the girl was staring at Seph, and
Seph kept meeting her gaze, then letting her own wander. Dance

floor, pool tables, other end of the bar and so, Curls—there she was,
right where Seph left her: eyes still set on Seph. It wasn’t exactly an
unwelcome stare. It wasn’t blank or mean, though not quite admiring
either. It was a kind of intently curious. Seph’s return glances were
slowly becoming admiring though, particularly of this girl’s hair, a
reddish-brown color, and the curls—long, down to her chest, and
tight. Seph wanted to wrap her finger in one.

The girl smiled, a tiny curve of her lips only, as Seph finally gave

in and held her gaze. The girl raised her brow. Seph didn’t look away.
She would see what this was about then. See if this girl had any
intention of coming over to her, or maybe of summoning Seph over
there. Seph wasn’t really sure how this worked. It had never happened
before.

A bartender suddenly blocked Seph’s view and Seph looked up,

realizing that she was approaching her. She set a pint of a dark beer
in front of her, and when Seph frowned, the bartender turned and
pointed over her shoulder to who else? Seph nodded and looked
around the bartender as she walked away. Curls waved at her.

Seph sighed. This was going to be awkward. Which should she

address first, the not drinking, or the not speaking?

She grabbed the beer and made her way over to the girl’s corner,

careful not to spill as she wove her way around stools and girls exiting
the dance floor.

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Seph frowned as she set the drink down on the counter next

to the girl, parted her lips as she started the inner debate about

whether to speak or just shrug and mime her way through this
when the girl stated, “I know you don’t drink, I just wanted to
make sure that you would come over here.”

Seph blinked.
The girl continued, “Clearly my staring contest wasn’t enough

on its own and I don’t want to just get your attention, I’d like to
keep it for a few minutes so that I might make a proposal. If you’d

be so curious and kind as to agree to follow me to a booth in the
lounge, I’ll buy you a beverage you’ll actually down and I won’t
take up more than just a few minutes of your time.”

Seph frowned harder, but nodded.
“Excellent.” The girl signaled a bartender, then looked back to

Seph. “I also know you don’t speak, so don’t worry about that. It
actually makes my job much easier. Now what’ll you have?”

Seph turned to the bartender, a regular who knew Seph, and

held up two fingers—a second round of her usual, please. The
bartender smiled and nodded. She pulled up a glass from the lower
shelf, dug it through a trough of ice and grabbed a hose from the
tap, clicking a button and filling the glass with water. She set the
water on the bar and was about to take off to fill other orders when
Curls waved her back, raising an eyebrow at Seph.

“Seriously, water? At least get something carbonated. The little

use it gets, I’m sure your tongue could do with a little bite.”

Seph’s heart thumped.
“Queen Charlie for the gallant and gracious lady and a Hi-Fi

for me please, thank you,” the girl instructed the bartender. The
bartender fixed her with a restrained glare, but she stepped away
to make the drinks. Curls flashed a grin at Seph so fast Seph
couldn’t be sure if she imagined it or not.

Seph looked over this stranger for any sense of intentions.

Proposal was a bit formal for at the least a make-out session and
at the most a hook up, but Seph wasn’t sure what kind of actual
business this girl could want with her, especially when this girl

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was dressed so casually—dark brown boots, fitted midnight blue
jeans, a satiny coffee brown blouse, and a short caramel brown
leather jacket. It didn’t hurt that this girl was attractive though.
Those curls framing a short oval face, her skin a fair peaches and
creamy white rather than the pasty pale Seph had always
considered herself as being. And did she have purple eyes? Seph
resisted the urge to lean in closer, and upon second look they just
looked like a dark blue, but Seph could’ve sworn she saw a flash
of deep violet shine in them, as if they were winking without the
interruption of an eyelid closing over them. Curls smirked and
followed Seph’s eyes wherever they went, pleased with the
attention the way a cat stretches in sunlight.

“Do you like lemonade?” she asked.
Seph nodded.
“Good. You’ll enjoy this then.” The girl nodded at the drinks

as they arrived. She tipped the bartender and bowed her head in a
thank-you, before scooping up a drink in each hand and tilting
her head towards the lounge. “Shall we?”

Seph nodded.
The lounge was dimmer than the bar area, and the music still

had a heavy bass beat, but it was overall more relaxed and played
at a lower volume. This was the place to cozy up and exchange
quiet words, or more. Or in this case, apparently have a classified
conversation.

Curls set the drinks down on the table and scooted around the

booth seat until she sat about three-quarters around the table from
where Seph stood. She smiled and patted the spot next to her, right

in the middle. Seph slid her way around the bench, bumping her
hostess’s elbow as she settled in. Seph had a brief moment where

she imagined their bodies colliding in other places and ways, but
she had promised to give this girl her serious attention, so she sent
the thought to the back of her head. Maybe for later. She scooched
back a bit to put more space between them.

Curls just continued smiling and passed Seph her drink, then

grabbed her own and raised it in a toast. Seph clinked her glass

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132

and they both took a sip, Curls sighing in satisfaction when she
brought the glass back down from her mouth. Seph licked her own
lips to taste more of the Queen Charlie—very sweet, but with the
fizzy bite promised. Curls leaned back against the booth, folding her
arms and stretching her legs out under the table, which Seph only
knew because she accidentally kicked her as she did so and
apologized. Then she began,

“You may call me Rhodo or Ms. Light, because you won’t be

allowed to know my real name, and I can see the gears turning in
your head with plenty of questions about who I am, what I want to
talk to you about, and based on those last couple of minutes waiting
for drinks, what color underwear I’m wearing.” She smirked again.
“So I’ll start with, ‘You may call me Rhodo or Ms. Light’. Not that I
expect you to out loud of course, but upstairs,” she tapped her finger
to her temple.

Seph nodded, acknowledgement and thanks.
“I will call you Joseph, I suppose, as that is what this country

claims is your ‘legal’ first name, and while I know that Commander
Grasmus has assigned you a nickname that you more commonly go
by, out of respect, I will refrain from using it until I’m given
permission.”

Seph raised an eyebrow. In that one sentence there was a lot of

information that only a few people knew. Not to mention the first
two nuggets she’d provided the moment Seph had stepped in front
of her. Rhodo’s grin returned.

“I’ve got a whole dossier on you, sweetie. You pull off the

beautiful tough chick look even better than in your pictures, by the
way.” Rhodo leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “But if
you don’t mind, I’m going to skip the whole part where I recite the
contents of said dossier to impress you because you already know
your birth date, your Dweryslo Citizen Code, your Belliskrayan Army
enlistment number, and all the juicy psych reasons for why you don’t
drink or talk and go by your murdered brother’s name. But you don’t

know why I’ve dragged you over here to freak you out with your

own personal information. I work for an agency, Joseph—”

Seph squirmed. When Seph had claimed her brother’s name as

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her own, she hadn’t thought too much about the different types of
people who may end up referring to her by it. She had assumed that
it would be the personnel of a military she despised, and beyond
them, the citizens of a country she had little pity for. Hot girls were
definitely not among her intended audience. And as dedicated as she
wanted to be to the memory of her brother, this sort of situation was
not one where she wanted thoughts of him popping up. It sounded
strange, to have this girl call her Joseph.

“May I call you Seph?” Rhodo offered, a little excitedly.
Seph gave a relieved smile, and nodded.
“Thank you. I work for an agency, Seph. We’re called Reperio. We

like to know things. We also make things happen, when we feel the
need, but mostly we like to know things. And we were wondering if
you might be interested in helping us come to know things.”

Seph blinked. She pressed her lips against themselves and sniffed

a breath into her nose, releasing it while she ran all that back through
her brain and made sure it meant what she thought it meant. She

leaned back into the booth. Rhodo gave her a moment, and then
continued her pitch.

“We’d start you as a floater - assignments only here and there,

mostly just information passes, until we could ensure your cover
would indeed be feasible, Commander Grasmus being so high
profile. And of course, we would want to ensure that you would
maintain a cover and not turn us over. And then we could work from
there. If we like each other, we can keep each other.”

Seph’s lips had pushed themselves over to one corner of her

mouth, and she looked from Rhodo, to her Queen Charlie— where
she debated taking a sip for a moment before deciding to wait—to
the table, and then back to Rhodo.

Rhodo paused for this processing, then went on, “I would be

your case manager. I know, talent scout, case manager—but you work
for an understaffed, underfunded organization. You know the multi-
tasking that must go on to keep things running. I wouldn’t create all
of your assignments, but I would be in charge of seeing that they are
passed to you, sometimes indirectly, sometimes directly, so hopefully,

you’ve enjoyed that Queen Charlie and didn’t mind my flirting.” She

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134

smiled. “If you were uncomfortable though, I could have another
case manager assigned to you and I’d just be jealous because hey, I
only did the whole prep study and interview.”

Seph couldn’t help an amused exhale. But that was about the only

thing Rhodo’d said in the past few minutes that she could take lightly.
Assignments. Information passes. Cover. Commander Grasmus.
Rhodo. It would be a lot. She was already carrying so much inside of
her, secrets and classified information would be a tight squeeze. But
worth it, perhaps. At least she would get to dump something on
someone else every once in while. At least she would get to
contribute something meaningful for a change. She hadn’t felt useful

or justified in any of her actions in so long, not other than in keeping
her silence, and she had to face it, that wasn’t as far reaching or
impactful as she’d hoped. This could be very good for her then. New

little projects for her anger.

“I’m sorry about your brother, by the way.” Rhodo interrupted

her thoughts, probably worrying that they were doubts. “What
happened to him was fucked up. I’ve read some accounts.” She
nodded, her jaw set. She took a breath. “…My agency and I, we both
admire your response to it, though. We admire your personal brand
of quiet sabotage. We’re just wondering if you’d be interested in
keeping the quiet, and just expanding on the sabotage, honestly.”

Seph believed Rhodo’s apology. Believed that she was genuinely

sympathetic of what had happened to her and the original Joseph.
But she also knew Rhodo had a job to do, and was doing it, by
fingering her trigger a little. And that was ok. Because she hadn’t
really needed to. Seph had made up her mind, and the mention of
her brother was just a reaffirmation.

“Yes. Ms. Light,” Seph said.
Rhodo smirked.
“You can call me Rhodo.”

t

Seph’s first assignment was to feign hearing loss in one of her ears
so Reperio could send her an earpiece and transmitter under the

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guise of a hearing aid issued by the army. She picked the right ear.
It would be easy enough given the amount of time it spent in close
proximity to gunfire and the amount of time she spent around
explosions. And she knew her team, despite plenty of evidence to
the contrary and their general respect of her, judged her small
stature and country of origin as being contributors to a somewhat
inferior physique. It would be highly plausible then, that with the
perceived delicateness of her body and all the noise trauma over
her years in combat, that her overall ability to hear had been slowly

declining the whole time, rather unnoticed to her, and it had only
just now finally reached a threshold that she couldn’t compensate
for. Particularly in her right ear, which had suffered more acutely
than the left. Sure.

So when her commander called out to her the next morning

after breakfast, she ignored him. It was probably the simplest
action she’d ever do as an agent, but she was surprised at how
much effort it required to not react to his voice. And not just
because immediately responding to a superior was an ingrained
habit.

If there was anyone she could put up with in this entire

military, it was Commander Daniel Grasmus. Only a few years her
senior, Grasmus was a foreign kid too, foreign even to Seph, and
that alone was enough reason for her to like him. He too could
appreciate not being particularly welcome in the ranks, even

though he’d still managed to rise fairly high in them. But she also
shared in the widely held opinion that he was smart and
compassionate and charismatic—an overall outstanding leader to
march for. And she had a rather personal appreciation for his sense
of humor, and his attempts to use it to get reactions and noises

out of her. A snort. A chuckle. Maybe even a sigh of annoyance.
He’d made her laugh once, loud and bright, with some snarky
comment about the commander of a rival team, and the surprised
joy that lit up his face when he heard such a sound escape her was
like a child watching a firework explode. He had been the one to
abridge her name to Seph. He’d noticed how uncomfortable it
made his higher-ups when he referred to her as Joseph, and he

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136

was sly enough to have heard stories as to why she went by that,
so he’d told her that while he respected that, he’d have to address
her otherwise. Originally he suggested shortening the name to Jo,
but when Seph crinkled her nose at the idea, he joked, “What else
can I call you? ‘Seph’?”. She pondered that a moment, then set her
jaw and nodded. He’d laughed. “Seph it is then.”

And Seph it was. Seph the kindred foreign spirit. Seph the

laughter challenge. Seph the matchmaker. And now, Seph the liar.
She wasn’t worried about whether she could do it or not, even
before she’d come to the realization that her life now depended
on her ability to lie to him. But it didn’t sit with her quite the way
she’d figured. And she didn’t want to spend too much time
dwelling on that fact.

When Seph didn’t respond, Commander Grasmus called out

to her again in the same pleasant tone, knowing she wasn’t one to
disobey or daydream. And when she ignored him again, he called
out again. She waited for the fourth time before finally turning,
raising an eyebrow politely as if it had been the first time he’d tried
to get her attention. Her commander frowned, approached her,

and spoke his piece. He had stopped about two feet from her, but

she leaned in to hear him, left ear first. Grasmus frowned again,
asked if she was feeling okay. She nodded, and he pursed his lips.
After thinking for a moment, he “hmm”ed, and wandered back
to whatever his previous business had been. He knew she’d gone
off to a club of her own last night, and he probably, hopefully,
racked up her difficulty hearing to being due to the loud ringing
of “concert ear”.

Seph repeated this for days with anyone who spoke to her.

Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Acknowledge. Lean in left ear first when
they spoke. Her commander watched her carefully, even employed
some of her teammates to try and sneak up on her, or walk up just
behind her and clap their hands. She let them surprise her and let

them clap several times before finally turning and giving them a
quizzical look.

When a week had passed and this behavior had persisted, her

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commander made their medic take a look at her. He checked in
her ears—with what even he acknowledged was pretty lousy
equipment—and he tried his own hearing tests. Employing all her

acting skills gained from faking sick to stay home from school,
Seph failed them.

A report was then sent to medical headquarters and combat

headquarters, informing them of Seph’s “injury” and requesting
a hearing aid so that she might continue fighting with some
assured effectiveness. While the army wasn’t really one to
accommodate the people of her background, they needed her gun
in the field, and they regarded her commander too highly to let
him march a squad that was any less than at maximum combat

readiness. Not that the reports ever made it to either location, as
they were intercepted by Reperio. They then sent the “hearing
aid”, in a box marked “Army Issue”.

The earpiece fit comfortably and discreetly into the small

hollow just outside her ear canal. On an almost daily basis, the
device downloaded her assignments, and instructions on how to
fulfill those assignments in cases requiring specific skill sets that
Seph didn’t have—like computer hacking. It was a very powerful
little machine, able to access encrypted wi-fi hotspots from as wide
a range as 1,000 miles away, so it could still download even when
Seph was stuck in the middle of the woods in the middle of
nowhere. At the careful push of a tiny button, a vaguely female-
sounding computer voice issued her missions, contact details, and
deadlines. Seph checked it every night before lights out, and
whenever she could excuse herself to pee throughout the day. She
could only listen to each download once before it was deleted
without a trace, and so she needed to be positive she was alone
when listening to it.

In the woods her assignments were boring, because they were

mostly all the same: try and overhear what Commander Grasmus
and his second-in-command were planning. If she heard anything
on broad troop movements, where her squad was relocating to
next, any kind of strategic information, she was to report it as soon

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138

as possible into the little strand microphone that, with the push
of another tiny button, telescoped out from the earpiece and
turned the unit into a discreet headset—because what couldn’t
this device do.

Bases were much better. Her assignments almost always involved

hacking a computer for maps, blueprints, or other classified tidbits
of information coded into a secure database. After figuring out the
frequency of guard rotations, and the locations of shift changes, Seph

slipped away from the rest of her squad, who were usually busy
relaxing in the comfort of a cot surrounded by four solid walls and
a solid floor instead of a tent in the dirt. Once she was en route to
her mission location, she tapped a button on her handy little earpiece
and it guided her through.

It started by providing an advisory time limit, an estimation of

how long her assignment should take her to complete, barring any
complications. This, along with a notification every time five minutes
passed, kept her mindful of her time as she spent it. Otherwise, it

could be too easy to lose herself in concentration, or frustration, if
she did encounter problems accessing the requested knowledge, and
she couldn’t risk suspicion or capture because she’d lost track of how

long she’d been gone.

When she finally accessed whatever device her assignment

required, the earpiece prompted her step by step: what passwords to
use, what to open, what not to open, how take apart the computer or
tablet itself if necessary, with what tools, what to remove or implant
and how to do so without detection. It told her the best way to cover

her tracks, stash or destroy evidence of her presence, and then it

reminded her of her time limit, still notifying her every time five

minutes passed as she slunk back to her squad’s part of the base.

A lot of research went into each of these downloads, and Seph

often wondered who was responsible for that information, and just
how big Reperio really was. She’d already understood quickly that
“group” was a misnomer to throw people off, and that

underground bureau was a much more accurate descriptor. But
still, how big was it?

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Cities and towns were by far the most fun. There she got to

sneak off for drops. She would know within three minutes of her
arrival if it was a live drop, where she’d meet with a person, or a
dead drop, where she’d just leave the item for an agent to recover
at a later time. She’d report to the south corner of the city or town’s

largest park—a personal Rhodo touch she believed, as her brother
had been killed in the north corner of her town square—and wait

to see if an agent arrived.

If present, they always approached her with a big grin and

greeted her with some phrase about lunch, “Sorry we couldn’t grab

lunch today, walk me to the office and tell me?”, “Thanks for
bringing my lunch money, I can’t believe I left it on the counter
this morning!” Then it was a handshake if the item was small
enough to palm, or they’d swing an arm around her shoulders,

forming a wall with their bodies, and they’d pass the object closely
between them. They’d walk together until they were out of the open
and then the agents would make up some excuse about forgetting
something at work or remembering they needed to dash over to
the store before the ration stamp specials were over, for the benefit
of anyone overhearing, and away they’d go, Seph waving them off
and heading back to her squad a different way than she’d come.

Dead drops were much less theatrical. She’d arrive at the park

and stroll around looking for the lamppost with lime green gum
stuck to it. This was the indicator that it either had a false base or a
false brick next to it, so if she knelt and pretended to tie her
bootlace, it was very easy for her to stash a drop item without being
obvious.

After six months of dead drops and bridge agents—go

betweens, Seph saw Rhodo again. Pleasant surprise was an
understatement as she saw that the agent approaching her with a
big grin was none other than Curls herself, face beaming, cheeks
flushed in the cold, curls bouncing against her shoulders. She didn’t
really use a code phrase, more just spoke the truth when she
greeted, “Nice to see you! It’s been a while! Thanks for coming on
such short notice, sorry to keep you hanging around.”

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Rhodo swept her into a half-hug and walked her over to the

nearest alley, where she wrapped her arms around Seph’s waist and
leaned her against the brick wall. Smirking at Seph’s lack of protest
at the pinning, Rhodo leaned in and kissed her. Seph felt a rush in
her stomach as if she’d just chugged six Queen Charlies. She wasn’t
ready when Rhodo pulled back.

“I wanted to do that the first night I met you,” Rhodo smiled.
Seph returned it.
“But, that would’ve been highly unprofessional of me. And if

I’d scared you off the bosses would’ve raged because ‘a Grasmus
agent would be invaluable, you must recruit her!’ And yes, that
was their order verbatim, which is also highly unprofessional of
me to be sharing with you, but I think it’s classy to let a person
know when they’re so greatly sought after and so I’m sharing
because with the army I’m sure you are long overdue for praise and
where was I? Again?”

Seph grinned and gripped the sides of Rhodo’s shoulders,

pulling her back into a kiss. Rhodo drew her arms back from
around Seph’s waist and slid her hands up under Seph’s ears until
her thumbs almost crashed into them. Seph slid an arm around

Rhodo’s shoulders, squeezing one with that hand and resting her
other hand on Rhodo’s hip. They took longer to separate that time,
but it was still too soon for Seph. There would never be enough
time.

“Ah yes,” Rhodo remembered, a little breathless. “Kinky

superior-subordinate stuff. Because it’s not an exploitation of my
power if you enjoy it!”

Seph laughed. It was a short sound, very quiet. More of a breath

that happened to carry a lighter pitch of her voice. But Rhodo
smiled at her like Seph had just plucked up a tiny flower from a
crack in the sidewalk and given it to her.

“It’s nice to hear you, too,” she said.
Seph folded her lips in a little and looked away, the tops of her

cheeks suddenly warm at the idea of Rhodo listening to her.

“Now.” Rhodo mercifully returned to business. “I believe you

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have a very interesting stick drive for me and my computer, yes?”

Seph nodded.
“Excellent. I believe you also have,” Rhodo checked her watch,

and then showed it to Seph for confirmation, “half of your 2-Hour
Liberty left?”

Seph nodded.
“Even better,” Rhodo grinned. She took Seph’s hand and led

her further into the alley, ducking them behind a pile of crates and
pallets.

Seph found herself pressed against the back wall of the alley

this time, though now Rhodo didn’t pin her there with anything
more than just her proximity to her. Seph had maybe about two
feet separating where she was standing from where Rhodo was
standing. She preferred their previous positioning.

“I know this hasn’t been your protocol when meeting with

other agents, and it’s certainly not mine with other operatives. But
today, in order to retrieve my item from you, I’m going to...” she

reached out and pinched the button on Seph’s coat lapel, running
her thumb over the crossed rifles and stars stamped on the metal,
“...search you for it.” She smirked. “It’s of course more fun, but
now that I think of it, it’s also a good chance to go over some
important concealment methods, so, pay attention too.”

Seph nodded, eager either way.
“I suppose we should start with making sure you’re avoiding

the obvious stash spots.” Rhodo stuck her hands in Seph’s coat
pockets and felt around. Finding nothing there, she smiled. “Good.
Now, this is a typical rookie, usually guy-type, mistake. They’ll put
the item in their back pants pocket. Like it’s a wallet or something.”

Rhodo slid her arms into Seph’s coat again and ran her hands into
Seph’s back pockets. She fanned her fingers out inside the pockets

and raked them slowly up from the bottom seams to the openings.
She flattened her hands and slid them back into the pockets,
pressing her palms against Seph’s ass so firmly that she pulled her
forward a little.

When Seph snorted at the directness of the touch, Rhodo

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justified, “Baggy pockets. Have to be very thorough not to miss
anything there.”

Seph tilted her head and nodded, chuckling at how her coat

pockets were bigger than her pants pockets and yet they had
received the shorter search.

Rhodo smirked, teased Seph with a quick butt squeeze, and

then removed her hands from Seph’s back pockets with a sigh.
“Moving along to more trusted tactics. Many of our breast-
possessing and bra-wearing agents have been known to conceal
items in their underwire, or just above the rib-seam of their bra if
they forgo underwire.”

Seph felt her entire face flush this time, but her shoulders

twitched in anticipation. She let out a throat-clearing cough, and
nodded, fighting a grin.

Rhodo smiled and tugged at Seph’s shirt a few times to untuck

it from her pants, then rolled it up her stomach gently, as if she
were wounded underneath. Seph shuddered a little as crisp air hit
her skin. With all the blushing, and the natural warmth Rhodo
inspired to swell inside of her, she’d forgotten it was on the chillier
side of cool days. Rhodo stepped forward and pressed her waist
against Seph’s, her wool coat a little scratchy but warm as it
covered Seph’s stomach. Her bottom lip curved down in a half-
frown.

“Sorry. It is cold.”
Seph smiled and shook her head. She took the crumpled hem

of her shirt from Rhodo with both hands and pulled it up over
her bra, curling it further and holding it at her collarbone. She
chuckled again at how widely Rhodo grinned.

“So, let’s see here.” She rested her palms on either sides of Seph’s

bra, and Seph was grateful for this additional source of warmth.
Rhodo pouted thoughtfully and slid her hands around to Seph’s back,
fingers drumming against the clasps for a moment. She pressed her
fingers to the bottom seam and followed it from the clasp, under
Seph’s arm, until she reached the perpendicular underwire seam. Her
fingers traced that up to the cups, then traced down the wires

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supporting the cups, her hands brushing against Seph’s abdomen.
She slid her hands to cover the cups, Seph inhaling a quick breath at
the feel of Rhodo’s hands on her breasts, even through material.

“Sometimes they’re able to hide things in the padding.” Rhodo’s

eyes were set on Seph’s. Seph held her gaze. She’d forgotten what
Rhodo was even talking about. She took in another small breath. The
cold. Rhodo’s hands. Her heart still managing to flutter even though
it was heavy with desire.

Rhodo either read her mind or they were sharing the same

thought, because she declared, “Yeah, I’m done with foreplay.” She
grabbed Seph’s belt and began to unbuckle it but then looked up,
eyes wide. Seph’s eyes widened in response.

“Sorry. Is this ok? I know I go fast. And that that’s one thing when

it’s flirting, and another entirely when it’s touching. So, if this is not

what you had in mind, please let me know.”

Seph released a breath of relief as she grinned. She leaned forward

and kissed Rhodo slowly just under the corner where her jaw met
her neck. She kissed her there a few more times, then introduced her
tongue. And then, very gently, her teeth.

Rhodo groaned a laugh.
“Ok. Usually I’m not one for ambiguous answers, but in this case,

take your time, sweetie.” She gathered some of Seph’s hair in her
hand and nudged her fingers through it, her other hand cupping the

side of Seph’s shoulder, as Seph’s mouth took a few minutes to
familiarize itself with her neck, her jaw, and as close to her collarbone
as the cut of her shirt would allow.

Eventually Seph brought her kisses back to Rhodo’s lips, and

while savoring those she unclipped her belt herself. She unbuttoned

and unzipped, and then took Rhodo’s hand from her hair and
dragged it down her neck, down the strap of her bra, down her torso
and guided it past both her pants and underwear.

Rhodo pulled her lips back from Seph’s to smirk as she hummed

a quiet growl in the back of her throat.

“There we go.”
Seph leaned her shoulders back against the wall and tilted her

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hips up to give Rhodo a better angle. Rhodo thanked her for her
consideration by bending to return some recent mouth favors on
Seph’s breasts. Seph moaned so low her sternum rang with it.

It was a sound quiet enough that only the two of them could’ve

heard it, but it still seemed so loud to Seph. She whimpered a little

as Rhodo finally went from massaging hand and teasing knuckle
to prying fingers and stroking fingernails. That whimper sounded
too loud to her too. Every noise she made, little as it was, seemed
amplified in her ears. ‘It’s nice to hear you, too’ she thought of
Rhodo saying. It was. It was nice to hear herself. She knew she had
to be discreet so they wouldn’t be noticed, as well-hidden as they
were, but when she felt like vocalizing, she let it out. Creaks and
squeaks and groans and hums. She didn’t have to restrain herself
to strictly sighs and pants, though there were plenty of those too.
She didn’t have to restrain herself. She didn’t have to hold
everything in. She could hear herself if she wanted.

Rhodo looked up at her and grinned, a just noticeable sheen

of sweat shining across her forehead. She kissed Seph’s forehead.

“Having fun?”
Seph smiled back. She could let herself be heard.
She was thankful however, when, as soon as she drew in the

telltale “Oh” breath, Rhodo leaned in to kiss her again, stifling
what could’ve been a pretty conspicuously loud release. Instead it
was just an “Mmnhf ” powerful enough that it felt like it
reverberated in both their throats. Which was just as satisfying for
Seph.

Rhodo released Seph’s mouth and pulled her hand back out of

her pants. She pulled her underwear back up to her waist, zipped
her up, buttoned her, and buckled her belt. She rolled Seph’s shirt
back down to her pants, met Seph’s eyes again, and let out a breath.

“Well, damn.” She grinned.
Seph released a breath of a laugh, standing up straight against

the wall again.

Rhodo kept looking at Seph with pure glee in her eyes. She bit

her lip and shook her head.

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“Oh. I so needed some ‘ahh’ in my espionage, Seph, you have

no idea.” She laughed. She sighed again, shaking her shoulders to
stretch them out.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of hours I’ve clocked

behind a desk this month!” She rolled her eyes. She crossed her
arms across her chest. “I think this is my first outing into fresh air
in just as long. Easily.”

Seph chuckled. Actually, she could believe Rhodo had clocked

too many hours at a desk this month. The way her fingers had just
worked her, Seph’s brain was still processing about 70 words per
minute. She mirrored Rhodo’s smile at her.

Rhodo gave another sigh and then checked her watch.
“Oh. Sweetie, you should go.” She looked up. “I mean me too,

but you’ll be in more trouble if you’re late.” Rhodo showed Seph
the time and Seph’s eyes widened. If she left right now she’d
probably have just enough time to make it back to camp before
Liberty Return Roll was read.

Rhodo grabbed her by her coat collar into one more strong

kiss and Seph resisted the urge to pull her into another hug,
knowing that would only make it harder to leave.

“I’m gonna miss you.” Rhodo’s eyes bore into Seph almost as

hard as her words. Seph could already feel the ache of her absence.
“And I’m gonna hate waiting to see you again. But, we’ve made
some pretty intense memories today, so I’ll be glad to hold onto
those in the meantime. Right?” She smiled. Seph nodded. Rhodo
kissed her forehead.

“Don’t forget to tuck in your shirt, sweetie.”
She backed out of the alley, keeping her eyes on Seph until she

reached the sidewalk and had to look where she was going again.
She turned her head to the left, and marched off in that direction.

As soon as Rhodo disappeared from view, Seph panicked. The

stick drive. The whole purpose of meeting in the first place, and
Seph had never given it to her. She waited a minute, hoping Rhodo
would realize this and come back for it. When she didn’t, Seph
rushed out of the alley and looked in the direction Rhodo had

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146

headed, but she was already gone. Swallowing hard, Seph reached
into the pocket under her coat lining just to make sure it was at
least still secure. The pocket was empty. Fear, and then relief spread
through her.

Seph may have forgotten, but Rhodo hadn’t. Seph wasn’t sure

when exactly she had obtained the drive, but she had spent plenty
of time fishing around in Seph’s coat, and she clearly knew all of
the best places in clothing to hide things.

Seph set her jaw and chuckled. Quite the brush pass.

t

For the next two years, Seph’s double life continued as a steady
routine of squad marches, earpiece transmissions, bridge agents,
and the all too occasional appearance of Rhodo, their rendezvous
becoming liaisons when time and place allowed.

Seph never knew exactly what was accomplished with the data

she filched. A lot of the time the intelligence she passed on needed
to be decoded or required translation, and even when it was
readable, each piece of information looked so isolated from the next.
She saw maps and schematics and place-names, yes, but none of
them seemed to connect in any way that she could recognize. She
figured that was something Reperio probably preferred. If she were
ever compromised she would have little to expose about them.

In turn, Seph was fine not knowing what Reperio’s big picture

was. So long as they did a little damage on her behalf, she was
satisfied. And especially so long as she could keep meeting with
Rhodo, she was satisfied. It was probably crass, but most of the
time it felt like little more than mischief-making. Look at
something she wasn’t supposed to. Tell secrets she wasn’t supposed
to, to someone she wasn’t supposed to be seeing. When she
marched with her squad everything felt the same as it always had.
No one seemed suspicious of her, and Seph was confident that she
could keep them ignorant. Grasmus still told her jokes. Still nudged

her to help him scan for girls when they were on liberty. The only

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thing that had really changed for Seph was her comfort with that
relationship. She still enjoyed Grasmus’s company, but now she did
so with a step taken back. There was a little more distance between
them, and while Grasmus didn’t seem to notice it, Seph felt a little
strange about it, and tried not to focus on it. Seph liked Grasmus.
But she loved Joseph and Dweryslo, and she’d known them a lot
longer. She didn’t regret the choice she’d made.

Seph should’ve known better than to think that it would all be

as easy as a dead drop in the park, though. Two years was a long
time to go without having to answer to a conscience. When it came
for her, it was brutal.

The squad was nearing the end of a very long march.

Pummeled by enemy fire for weeks, they’d lost three of their
twelve-person unit helping to defend an important border river,
before they were finally relieved and sent further back into home
territory. For the past couple days, they’d been stopped at a supply

base called Malynmet to rest, and the next morning they were due

to start their return to their home base for a whole week’s leave—
a reward for their efforts.

Over breakfast, however, the officer in charge of the supply

base issued them a new order.

“I’m gonna need you to pull a little guard duty for me before

you can head on home.” He pretended not to hear the chorus of
quiet groans. “Listen. I got a supply convoy due up north in four
hours and I’d like you to ride along with ‘em for extra security. I
don’t expect any problems, but this is a big load of goodies and
I’d rather not take the chance. The convoy has its own squad,
almost one for each of you, so at least you’ll have a buddy to play
sight games with as you stare bored out the window thinkin’ how
much you hate me for ruinin’ your day.” He smirked at the
chuckles he received for that one. “Once you get to the drop-off
location, just sit tight with your new pals and a squad should be
up to relieve you tomorrow.”

Grasmus got up from the commanders’ table and approached

the officer.

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“With all due respect, sir. There are no other soldiers that could

take this ride?”

“Your squad too sleepy-headed to handle a routine ride, son?”
“My squad is actually a few different kinds of exhausted, sir. If

there are other soldiers available, I’m not sure it’s necessary for
my—”

“There are no other soldiers available!” the officer addressed

the little mess hall. “The squad that was supposed to be here, can’t
get here, because of a storm downing trees almost on top of ‘em
and they have to reroute. Their new course should get them here
by tomorrow, but I can’t wait that long, so it’s gotta be you that
makes the ride. Today.” He turned to Grasmus, raising and
dropping his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Sorry ‘bout the
war, son.”

Grasmus gave half a smile and nodded, accepting the

admonishment, and the squad laughed. ‘Sorry about the war’ was
actually one of Seph’s favorite phrases of this military, used
primarily as a warning to anyone who was whining, though was
also known to be offered as a form of commiseration. We have to
ration this candy because it’s not safe to dispatch non-essential
food this far into a swamp? Sorry about the war. I have to pull
double watch tonight after marching all day ‘cause my relief is

sick? Sorry about the war, man. It was mostly the soldiers who
said it, though everyone knew of it, and it was always fun when a
commanding officer broke a bit of their decorum and used it.
Especially when they said it to your commanding officer. Seph
couldn’t blame Grasmus for being a little whiney though. Thanks
to her help on their last liberty at home base, he had a bartender
who was likely waiting for him, and she knew the feeling. Unlikely
as it would be, she was hoping Rhodo might make a return to

Zaychicks, and they could revisit the lounge.

“You move out in ten minutes!” The officer barked. “Finish

your fake eggs and remember to use the toilet.”

Ten minutes later Seph and her rifle sat crammed between

heavy plastic boxes and the tailgate of a canvas truck, scanning

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behind and to the side for anything suspicious as the truck rolled
through the woods. She was glad the regular convoy guard
scrunched in the other corner was as silent as she was. When she
was assigned to the vehicle, one of her squadmates had given the
usual notice to the guard on her behalf that she didn’t speak. But
sometimes even when that was done, these temporary partners

would still try and chat with her, and Seph never had any interest.

Even if she didn’t adhere to a silence code, she would’ve just
nodded along anyway. So she was thankful to be in this girl’s
vehicle, where a focus on the job was the only thing shared
between them. She just wanted this ride to be over.

Seph got her wish a few minutes later when they rumbled

through a meadow and she heard an explosion erupt further up
the convoy. Her truck slammed on its brakes, and she almost lost
her balance as she scrambled to vault one-handed over the tailgate,
careful to pull her legs up high enough to clear it. Her feet hit the
ground then her back hit the truck. Keeping tight to the truck, she

checked around the corner. There was one truck between hers and
a fireball with tires.

“Watch it,” the guard called over to her. “Truck in front of us

is carrying ammo.”

As if on cue, the truck in front of them lit up and Seph pulled

back around the corner. The explosion almost threw her on her
knees, but she grabbed the tailgate and braced herself. Then the
familiar sound of bullets zipping into the ground, into trees, into
trucks. The boxes containing munitions were supposed to be
fireproof, but Seph wasn’t surprised that all these years at war had
worn them down. Seph thought she heard her truck’s cab doors
open and the spray of a fire extinguisher.

Seph’s guard was shooting into the woods now, trying to take

out whoever had the explosives, or at least any of their friends that
might be stashed away. Now would be a good time for an ambush,
while the convoy was panicked and already under fire from one
of its own trucks. Seph started shooting into the trees on her side,
hoping they weren’t surrounded.

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After a few rounds with no answer, Seph covered her guard,

who was getting plenty of responses. There was a well-armed, but
apparently small group hidden in the woods on Seph’s guard’s
side. Seph thought she could identify about four rifles focused on
her truck, and guessed that about the same number were targeting

the other remaining truck at the front of the line. There had
probably been one or two in charge of explosives, but since the

truck bombings had stopped, Seph assumed they’d been snuffed
already. So, eight to ten total. Probably a special missions team.
Nobody else would be trusted to attack a moving unit almost twice

their size.

But they proved why they were specialists. They kept the

firefight up for about an hour before the convoy managed to clear
them out. Once they were sure they could proceed, the two

surviving trucks sped on to their destination with what was left
of the supplies. Seph barely glanced at the still smoldering wrecks
of the trucks they left behind. She knew if she got stuck looking
at the twisted mess for even a few seconds, her brain would start
trying to make sense of it, start trying to discern the shapes of
bodies from the shapes of supplies. And she refused to try to
remember who was assigned to each truck.

Once they unloaded at the destination it was easy enough to

figure out. With two of four trucks and half of each of their squads
gone, it didn’t take long to see who had made it, and so by default,
who didn’t. And Seph was really only looking for one person.

Grasmus’s absence was the one everyone noticed first. As soon

as they had all circled up to see who was left, a heavy silence
pushed their nervous shoulders down, and then came the breaths
of “Commander.”

“Second truck,” someone mumbled.
They’d also lost their second-in-command, a casualty of the

truck in front of Seph’s, which left them stranded leadership-wise
until they could be transferred to a new squad. Their current squad

had been reduced to five people, including Seph.

The names and faces of her fallen squadmates surfaced in her

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mind, but it was Grasmus’s that took precedence. Grasmus was the
reason her stomach cramped and she looked for the nearest exit
and when she found it she marched out of it and then along the
side of the building about halfway where she decided it was far
enough to stop for now and when she did she braced her hands
against the wall and vomited. Forget the trucks, Seph. She heaved
again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of her squadmates
step out of the door and walk a few steps towards her, pause for a
moment, and then head back inside. Seph was glad to be left alone.

She spit a few times, big gobs of saliva, and then she walked a

few feet further down the building and leaned her back against
the wall, sliding down it until she was squatting. She ran her hands

through her hair and held them there as she cried. Cried over what
she had just survived as much as for what Commander Grasmus
hadn’t. She chuckled a little at the thought that he’d gotten her to
make some sounds again. These were sounds she hadn’t missed.

She sat down on the ground and took her earpiece out, feeling

strange about mourning her commander with it in. In addition to
the fact that she’d used it to work against him and it seemed a little

disrespectful, she also just wanted some privacy. As the earpiece
caught her eye, a memory caught in her mind. Supply convoy.
Supply trail re-route.

About a month ago she’d sent Reperio a memo about a supply

trail being re-routed. There was no map, which Seph had found
strange, but there was enough information that if Reperio couldn’t

apply it to any number of maps they were likely to already have,
then they could’ve easily built their own. The region mentioned

in the memo actually had three supply routes leading to one city,
but the routes were driven in rotations to help avoid discovery and
attacks. Information about two of the routes had been censored
from the base Seph was lifting the memo from, but she tried to
remember what she’d read about the route the base had been privy
to. There’d been route usage dates. The 21st to the 24th. Some
place-names. Odyntri, Arknils, Malynmet, Visimrod. ...Malynmet.
She knew she recognized that base name when she read it on their

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152

arrival. She swallowed hard before looking over to the building
perpendicular to hers. “Visimrod Base” it read. She checked her
watch. Today’s date was the 23rd. Her hands returned to her hair
as she propped her elbows up on her knees.

The ambush she’d just survived was a result of stealing

information for Reperio. She’d finally run into her own work. It
was a thought that had scared her at the beginning of her spying,
but that had since faded to dwell in the back of her mind, like her
fear of dying in combat. After every day it didn’t happen, it receded
a little further into the murk of her thoughts, so that after so many
days, years of days where it didn’t happen, it wasn’t a thought that
nagged her anymore. It had been relegated to just jumping out

when dangerous situations arose.

Two years was a good streak, really. Belliskray was a big country,

but it wasn’t infinite and Reperio couldn’t be expected to skirt
around her whenever she was close to one of their operations. She
hadn’t had time to report to them her squad’s change in
movements, so they hadn’t known she was in the convoy. But even

if they had, she doubted they would have had the mission
scrapped, just for her sake. She was sure they considered her

valuable, but she was willing to bet she was expendable, if the
situation necessitated it. It’d be a happy surprise for them when
they learned they got Grasmus.

Her heart throbbed. Its beats were heavy and pinching when

she thought of him. She had hoped he’d live through the war.
When she’d first entered military service for Belliskray, she’d hoped
every soldier would die. But as she marched with her squad, she
slowly stopped hoping that for them and embraced them with a
mild indifference. If they died, well, it would be weird to have

them missing, and depending on who it was, maybe she’d be a
little sad. If they lived, well, that was some good luck, and Seph
wouldn’t hold it against them.

But Grasmus. She’d hoped he would live. And if he had to die

in the war, that he’d die fighting in combat. And if he had to die
because of her work with Reperio, that she’d shoot him herself.

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Because he’d deserve to know she was responsible for his death.
Even if it was only for a second, she wanted him to know, so that
she wouldn’t have had to lie to him about that too.

He’d have understood. If it’d come down to a standoff, her or

him, he would’ve understood her choice. He even would’ve
understood her decision to spy for Reperio, though he would’ve been
hurt by her duplicity. If Seph could’ve shot him she could’ve been
honest with him again, just for a moment.

But when Commander Grasmus died he thought it was war and

that Seph was on his side, and those were two lies Seph hated to tell
at the same time. Her heart ached again, a little punch in her chest,
and she choked on one last sob before she could stop herself, her
hand clapping to her mouth to muffle the sound. She took her hand
down and let out a breath. She inhaled another deep breath, feeling
a tingling as it entered her lungs, and then she sighed it out, leaning
her head back against the wall.

All this and the war wasn’t over yet. She slouched against the wall.

She still had to march for this stupid country. She’d be transferred to
a new squad. Have to deal with a new Commander, have to establish
a reputation all over again, have to figure out how to tip-toe around

everyone. Maybe some of her current squadmates who would
transfer with her would be generous and vouch for her. Because
Reperio would still have work for her to do too.

t

Seph was crying again. No smeary snot, no awkward sobbing sounds,
but her vision kept blurring at the bottom, her cheeks were warm
and wet, and her breath kept catching in her chest. Both arms were
crossed tight over her front as she marched through the cold dark to
her rendezvous location—attic room, boarding house, enter via the
wooden back stairs when the light cracks through the blackout
curtains after 23:30. She removed one of her hands from being
clamped under her armpit and wiped at her nose, catching tears that
had channeled themselves under it and beaded off its tip.

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This reaction was becoming more and more common after

assignments, almost a reflex—the huff of an exhale to a sharp
inhale.

Seph covered her face with both hands, swept over it with

them, clearing her eyes and cheeks from tears dried and still
dripping. She reached the lamppost with the lime green gum, not
that it was really necessary as Seph had been to this safe house
many times, and she knew where to stand to best see the sliver of
light escape through the curtains. She positioned herself just
outside of the white light ring shining down from the street lamp.
Leaning against the chain-link fence, she checked her position
again, making sure she hadn’t been followed, though she didn’t
know who would want to be in this dingy end of town at this
time of night, except for her. She was alone. Even as a crying mess
her senses were keen. She was still attuned to her environment,
still sure that it suited her, still on the alert for signs that that may
have changed.

She wiped her eyes one more time, smoothed her face again,

sniffed. She didn’t want to answer any more questions from Rhodo
than the ones she’d already planned on. She looked up to where
she knew the window would be, multiple previous visits having
trained her eye exactly where to gaze into the dark if she wanted
to see it split into light, for just a brief flash. Seph saw it just then.
But it had come too fast. Seph checked her timepiece. It was only
23:28. Rhodo was really missing her. Seph smiled.

She tread the wooden steps placing her weight as heavily as

possible on her toes, no easy feat in combat boots. She managed
to climb them soundlessly enough, any slight creaks she caused
easily excused as the old house settling, or perhaps a light breeze
caressing the boards. She maintained her carefulness as she reached
the landing, and crossed it to the door. She knocked. Once. Once
twice. The door opened and Rhodo emerged as a pale figure from
the dark—the light had to be off whenever the interior of the
house was exposed, but it could be on once they were inside so
long as the blackout curtains were drawn.

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“Hi, sweetie,” she grinned, pulling Seph in by the coat sleeve.

Seph couldn’t resist grinning in return. It had been three months
since they’d last seen each other, this after a stretch of seeing each
other once a month for the seven months before that. Rhodo shut
the door and flicked on the light. She grabbed Seph’s coat sleeve
again, pulled her closer and leaned over to kiss her, but Seph
turned her face and caught in on the cheek. She kissed Rhodo’s
cheek before she could see the stunned annoyance in her eyes, and
turning to the bathroom she asked,

“Have you used up your water ration for the day?”
“Not yet.” Rhodo’s irritation was present in her tone.
“I’m sorry. Give me a head start.” Seph kissed her forehead

without looking at her, and then strode across the room, around the
bed and into the bathroom, turning the light on and shutting the
door behind her before she could change her mind or look back.

Just a few more minutes. She needed just a few more minutes

to collect herself. Rhodo had signaled early.

Seph shed her heavy black wool coat, pulled her black t- shirt

over her head, unclasped her military issue beige bra and slid her
arms out of its thick straps. She bent to tug off her right boot, then
her left, and as it hit the floor she sighed a heavy, long breath. She
stood there for a moment, feeling the pull of her weight on the
bottom of her spine. The sharp stretch at the back of her slightly
bent knees that kept her balanced. The dull heaviness of her fingers
as her arms dangled and her blood slid down. She reached for her
ankles and slid her socks off one foot at a time. She straightened
up, opened her belt buckle and loosened the belt, unzipped her
black jeans and stepped out of them. She slipped her underwear
down her legs and let out another sigh, a short puff this time, and
shivered through the sensation of being fully naked in a warm

room. She remembered to take out her earpiece.

Leaning over the tub, Seph pulled the lever around to the red

half of the circle, and there was a rumble before the rush of water.
Seph stuck her fingers under the spout, wiggled them in the water,
flicked them and turned the lever until the water temperature was

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just cool of scalding. Watching to make sure she lifted her legs high

enough to not catch her ankles on the edge, she stepped into the
tub, and pulled the curtain closed behind her.

She stood under the stream, not a bad pressure for a multi-

story shack with water rationed, and as the water drenched her
head and neck, she felt her shoulders hunch instead of relax. She
crossed her arms over her chest again, and flinched, resting her

head on the wall beside her. Not even hot water made this ache
go away.

Seph huddled under the spray, trying to drown her thoughts

for a couple minutes before she heard the door open again,
Rhodo’s bare footsteps on the tile. Seph jumped a little at the sound
of the shower curtain being pulled back a few rings. Rhodo
brushed her back as she crept in behind her, fitting herself in the
small space between Seph and the wall holding the showerhead.
Hands stroked from the top of Seph’s head down through her wet
hair, gathering it behind her ears into a short ponytail and then
fingers followed the strands slowly to their ends, letting them drop
in their damp clumps back onto her neck. Ease finally came to

Seph’s frame. Rhodo repeated the motion a few times, before
bringing one arm around both of Seph’s, draping her other arm

around Seph’s waist, and pulling her backwards against her. She
kissed her shoulder, diffusing a bead of water on her skin.

Seph gasped at the sudden press of Rhodo’s breasts against her

back, dry skin against wet, water trapping between them, then
trailing down around Seph’s spine in thin little rivers. She moaned
a little at the pressure, Rhodo’s tongue on her neck, her palm
smoothing low across Seph’s stomach, following the curve of her
hips. Seph lowered her arms as Rhodo kissed her way from
shoulder to shoulder, tilting her head back just enough so that the
angle at which the spray hit her hairline made it feel like the water
flowing through her hair actually was her hair. Warm, weightless,
winding. Rhodo slid one hand up to massage Seph’s now
unguarded breasts, one at a time, while sliding her other hand
down to Seph’s groin. Seph squeaked a little and leaned her head

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forward again as Rhodo’s fingers slid through her hair and rubbed
circles against her. She fought the urge to cover Rhodo’s hand with
her own and make her press harder. Rhodo knew what she was
doing when it came to Seph. Always had. In every area. As if to

remind her of this herself, Rhodo bit Seph’s ear gently and nibbled.

Seph let out a husky pant. Rhodo’s lower hand stroked Seph
between her legs as far down as she could reach in long, slow
motions, while she dragged the fingertips of her other hand up
from Seph’s belly button up between her breasts and back again,
strumming Seph like an instrument. Handler indeed, Seph couldn’t

help thinking, and she would’ve giggled if she weren’t feeling so
blissfully grateful.

Rhodo was holding her in all the right ways, hiding kisses in

Seph’s hair, and Seph felt a familiar and welcome hot pinch in her

belly, a hum that was gathering resonance and was about to rise
throughout the rest of her, slow and steep, when the water shut
off. Thunk. Quiet.

Seph’s eyes flew open. She paused.
“Damnit!” she wailed. “Water rations,” she moaned. “Fuck this

war. Fuck fuck fuck.”

Rhodo stifled a chuckle. She pecked Seph’s shoulder, still held

her, but Seph shivered. Seph supposed she was lucky. With Rhodo’s
help she’d managed to stretch what must’ve been only a few
minutes to feel like an hour of relief. But she hated being told
when to stop. Hated being cut off. And a shower was the least and
trivial of its offenses, but damn this government had done it again.

Seph sighed, prying herself from Rhodo and stepping out of the
tub to grab a towel. Rhodo followed behind her and Seph turned,
towel in hand, to wrap it around Rhodo and pull her to her. They
couldn’t both fit in it, but the edges at least closed around Seph’s
sides, and Rhodo’s body was keeping her warm.

Seph smiled, looking at her, really looking at her for the first

time tonight. She meditated a moment in admiring Rhodo’s eyes.
Indigo. Seph wouldn’t believe it if she hadn’t seen them herself, if
she hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing them for herself so many

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times and in so many lights, but Rhodo had indigo eyes. Dark,
deep blue blended with a subtle but still potent hue of purple.

Seph kissed her left eyelid, then her right, and then her mouth,
Rhodo’s hands reaching up to hold her face and keep her close.

As angry as Seph was about the water shutting off, she was glad

it had forced this reminder. She needed this too, affection she
could reciprocate to Rhodo, not just take from her. Kisses would
be the start, and she shared as many as she could before she started

to shiver from still being wet and mostly naked. Smirking, she
pulled her lips back from Rhodo’s, pulled the towel tighter against
them and lowered her chin to smolder a lustful look into those
incredible indigo eyes. Rhodo raised her chin, eager to be
challenged, all too happy to let Seph take control. Staring each
other down, they walked their way slowly and carefully back to
Rhodo’s bed.

The backs of Rhodo’s knees finally hit her mattress and she let

herself fall, pulling Seph by the shoulders on top of her. They each
grunted a little at the gentle impact of their bodies against each
other, sighed and groaned a bit at the brush of breasts, bellies, and
hips as they shifted to move a little further onto Rhodo’s bed and
lie comfortably. Rhodo parted her legs and raised her knees. Seph
pressed against her, running a hand from her ass down her thigh
to grab her leg and hitch it around Seph’s hip to fit them together
a little tighter. Rhodo tilted her head back in a chuckle and rolled
her hips playfully, rubbing herself against Seph. The way Rhodo’s
stomach moved when she did so, a curve up and then a settling
down in one fluid motion, made Seph throb and buck into her
once already. But first things first. Reciprocation.

Seph leaned down and kissed her way up the valley between

Rhodo’s breasts, smiling when Rhodo giggled and threaded her
fingers through Seph’s hair. Seph gave Rhodo’s ass a gentle squeeze,
and then her lips traveled up Rhodo’s breastbone, snuck over to
the soft spot just above her clavicle, stroked and sucked against her
neck, stealing higher and higher until Seph was kissing her jaw,
kissing her cheek, kissing her lips once again.

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Rhodo kept her there for several kisses, cradling her face at the

back of her jaw, rubbing her thumbs against her cheeks. Rhodo
opened Seph’s mouth with her own, slid her tongue to tap under
Seph’s top teeth before meeting the tip of Seph’s tongue and Seph
laughed. Every time. Rhodo giggled, at her own cleverness and the
rumble of Seph’s laugh against her chest, the shake of Seph’s chest
against her chest. Tongues had their moments to play and then
Seph couldn’t take lying still any longer. Sliding to straddle Rhodo’s
leg, Seph rocked her hips slow and firm against Rhodo’s, grinning
as she felt her grow wetter against her, as she felt herself grow
wetter. She kissed Rhodo’s mouth, then returned her lips to her
neck, settling into a rhythm and the sound of Rhodo’s moan. They
relaxed into their shared muscle memory, waists writhing together,
rolling through each motion like a wave, Rhodo’s hands rubbing
Seph’s back and then her nails digging into her shoulders,
dragging them down and up, down and up.

“Oh, what the—” Rhodo whined when Seph shifted again,

separating them back into two bodies and abandoning the curve
of her collarbone. But Rhodo wasn’t displeased for long, as Seph
returned to her chest, this time kissing her nipples in long puckers
that became sucks. “Nnng, Seph,” Rhodo moaned louder and
thrust up against her. Seph’s teeth and tongue made their way
around all sides of each of Rhodo’s breasts and then she was
moving on again, kissing ribs, the sweet soft spot just beneath
them and then down Rhodo’s stomach, down her groin and into
the folds of her. Rhodo gasped as Seph’s tongue licked a different
set of lips, and her hand was back in Seph’s hair, getting a gentle
grip and coaxing for more. Seph kissed and nibbled down Rhodo’s

inner thighs, first one, then the other, which earned her an
admonition for starting in the right place but “going the wrong
way!” After kissing a knee and flashing a grin that she knew would
get her a growl of annoyance, Seph pulled Rhodo’s thighs onto
her shoulders, burying her face between Rhodo’s legs. The growl
that resulted this time was pure, wonderful placation.

Seph’s tongue was nimble as it traced and teased the outline

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of her, the innermost edge of her, and it was strong as it pushed into
her, massaged her, and pulsed against her clit. Seph’s lips were soft in
their motions, giving small, tight-lipped kisses, spreading and
pressing in broad sucks, and brushing against and blowing on tender

areas. And Seph’s hand could never find a place to linger—just kept
sliding between Rhodo’s hipbones, around her hip, cupping the side

of her ass and giving a squeeze, slipping down the outside of her
thigh, tracing back up her thigh, up through the crease of it where
her leg met her body and then it was back to hipbones—sweet, tense

hipbones.

Rhodo shivered and bucked through moans and pants and sighs

and Seph loved the quake and the jolt that made her reposition almost
constantly. She loved watching the fall and rise of Rhodo’s stomach,

chest, as she breathed, or rather, fought for breath. Her skin flushed,
cheeks and breasts blushing dark pink and her curls bounced against
her shoulders. She covered her eyes, she clenched her quilt in her
fists over her head, she snickered, she goaded, she begged, she fell
reverently silent. Seph could do this to her all night, but the way
Rhodo’s legs trembled at her ears and the backs of her thighs
squeezed her shoulders Seph knew she didn’t have much longer. She
pressed one last suck of a kiss to Rhodo’s clit and eased a finger inside

her, slow, deep, then slid it back just as slow. She held her mouth
against Rhodo and slid two fingers into her this time, then back out,
then in again, and thrust, thrust, thrusted them, until Rhodo arched.

“Oh God, Seph!” she squeaked, restraining what she wanted to

be a yell but knew could only safely escape as a breathy whisper, her
heels digging into Seph’s back.

Seph gripped Rhodo’s thigh with one hand, the other now

stroking between her own legs, riding Rhodo’s come down until it
became her own. Watching Rhodo flatten her back against the bed
again, breasts bobbing, her stomach sloping then tightening again,
Seph wasn’t far behind. She let out a quiet grunt, almost an
afterthought. Rhodo had been the focus. Seph had remembered
herself at the last minute. Rhodo had noticed this.

“Come up here,” she commanded.

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Seph crawled further up the bed and lay beside Rhodo,

propping her cheek up on her arm

“Kiss me,” Rhodo requested.
Seph smiled, did so.
“Now, let’s try this again. Hi, sweetie.”
“Hi, sweetie,” Seph greeted her properly, finally.
“So, straight to the hot shower and then you get your own self

off? Rough day?”

“To be fair, you got me most of the way until the shower clit-

blocked me. I just, finished my—” Seph didn’t get to finish her
sentence though. Rhodo’s look wouldn’t let her. Seph sighed.

“So again I ask, rough day?”
Seph rolled onto her back, stretched her arms up and bent

them to rest her hands behind her head. She closed her eyes,
feeling the stretch in her chest. She liked lying like this. It reminded
her of cloud watching and stargazing. It was her default peace
position.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she admitted finally.
Rhodo snorted, resting her head on Seph’s shoulder and

cuddling up against her.

“I’m the only person you talk to at all.”
“Mm.”
Rhodo stroked the curve of Seph’s side. She leaned up and

nibbled Seph’s earlobe.

“And I have ways of making you talk.”
Seph snorted.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Oh.” Rhodo sat up, throwing her leg over Seph’s hips and

straddling her. “I think I will decide what is and isn’t necessary.”

Seph accepted a kiss, shrugging her shoulders in Rhodo’s curls

and then a happy thought came to her. A memory from before the
databases and the drops and the din inside her head about how
and how long she should live in the moral gray area: Rhodo’s curls.
Reddish-brown, long, down to her chest, and tight. Seph had
wanted to wrap her finger in one. She did so now and grinned.

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Since she’d met her, Rhodo was the only thing Seph was sure
about.

“Remember when we first met, and you told me that if we

liked each other, we could keep each other?”

Rhodo smiled.
“Of course I do.”
“Well, I know you didn’t mean ‘us’ we, when you said it—”
“I left a lot of room for it to eventually be interpreted that way

actually.” Rhodo laughed.

Seph raised an eyebrow.
“I’m incredibly forward, do you remember that from when

we first met? And, the second time we met, even?”

“I do.” Seph smiled. “Well, I like you Rhodo. I want to keep

you. Can we talk about that for a while?”

Since Joseph was killed, Seph’d grown accustomed to a yanking

under her breastbone of screams she couldn’t give voice to,
because they’d be too loud or too long or too late. She’d noticed
it had grown duller over the years, but it would always be there,
she was sure. And in the several months since Grasmus was killed,
her skin had been more prone to chills than she could remember,
not just when fog sailed through a camp at night or when rain

pelted her through the leaves of trees she huddled under, but in
the middle of the morning, when the sun was shining in a
clearing. Or when a match was struck. She figured it was his ghost
finally finding her or letting her know that it was still looking and

she was fine with that. After she’d gotten him killed in a field and
left him there it was more than fair if he wanted to haunt her.

These, and more, were conditions she could bear, and after

spending so much time carrying them with her she considered
them integral parts of her. But she wanted to be more than the

sum of the deaths of the people she cared about. She wanted to be

alive. And Rhodo had always made her feel that way. Whether it
was buying her Queen Charlies or being the first, and still only,
person she consented to speaking to since her brother’s death, or
just sitting astride her, curls dangling against her chest, smiling

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down at her. Seph had been realizing over the past couple years
that she needed all that more than she needed to be justified, or
satisfied, not that those weren’t still important to her too. But being
happy was what was going to take precedence now. And talking
about a more solid future with Rhodo made her very happy.

Military generals and secret agencies weren’t the only ones

who could make daring plans.

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164

A.C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal and currently lives in the
Philadelphia area. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as
Clarkesworld, ChiZine, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 4. In
addition to her writing, she co-edits the online ‘zine The Journal of
Unlikely Entomology. For more information, visit the author’s
website at www.acwise.net.

Chris Amies’ publication credits include one novel, Dead Ground,

one illustrated non-fiction book about London pubs, and around
twenty stories in magazines and anthologies such as the recent Music

for Another World. His stories are sometimes straight Science Fiction but
mostly tend more towards Urban/Dark Fantasy. Most recently he has

been producing flash fiction and one of his online stories, “Beyond
Your Command”, was translated into the constructed language Toki
Pona. He has several novel projects under development.

T.C. Mill studies philosophy, watches too much BBC TV, and

writes her next story on the world’s smallest netbook at home in
a pleasant town in Wisconsin. Dreamspinner Press has published
her fantasy novelette After the War and A Spell of Passion or Fear, a novella
set in a steampunk version of Plato’s Republic. Her author’s website
is: tc-mill.com.

A. J. Viggen may claim to be a secret agent, a fighter pilot and/or

an anthropomorphic dog, but is actually a writer.

Shawn Erin loves to think big, write small. A life-long science

fiction/fantasy reader and writer, he’s had stories or poetry published
in The Quantum Muse, Aoife’s Kiss, Drabbler, and Scifiakuest. This is his third
story published by Circlet Press. In addition, he’s a Taos Toolbox
graduate. Currently trying to “make it big,” he’s also practical and
realizes he may need to find a mundane job. However, he’s always a
writer first. For compliments or complaints, he can be reached at
[e-mail].

Contributors

Eric Del Carlo’s erotic science fiction and fantasy have appeared

in numerous Circlet Press anthologies, as well as with Loose Id,
Ravenous Romance and Cleis Press. He has also written a great deal
of mainstream s-f and fantasy, with appearances in Asimov’s, Redstone
Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and other pro magazines. His novels
include NO Quarter, a New Orleans-based mystery written with the
late Robert Asprin, and Nightbodies, an apocalyptic erotic novel
published through Ravenous Romance. Check out ericdelcarlo.com
for more info and contact with the author.

Kaysee Renee Robichaud lives and writes in south Texas. Her work

has appeared in numerous anthologies from Circlet Press, Ravenous
Romance and Alyson Books. Current works can be found in Like a
Cunning Plan (from Circlet) and Seductress (from Cleis Books). Also, her
supernatural thriller “Cave and the Vamp” is available as an eBook
publication from Vampires 2 Publishing, appearing under the nom
de plume C. C. Blake. Keep up with Kaysee at her livejournal:
http://kayseerenee.livejournal.com/.

Reina Delacroix is the pen name of a shy, quiet person of

information and experience surviving life in the 21st century United
States of America through words, music, and a menagerie. Stories
from her have appeared in previous Circlet Press anthologies such as
Erotic Fantastic, Fetish Fantastic, Sextopia, and the recent Circlet ebook Like an
Iron Fist. She keeps searching to find other lost tales in her wilds, and
is hoping to hear from others on the journey at
http://reina_writes.livejournal.com/.

Julian Oliver-Fenn is a writer of fiction. Some of it is erotic,

some is fantastical, some is both, and some is neither. You can find
more of his writing that falls into the ‘both’ category at
http://artisanalerotica.com

Max Erica Scott recently completed her own real-life Oregon Trail,

managing to drive from southern Massachusetts to Portland, Oregon
without dying of dysentery. When she’s not (still) giggling over how
cool Mt. Hood is every time she sees it, or remembering how to
properly pronounce “The Willamette River”, Scott is otherwise
settling into her new Northwest home, and writing stories about

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166

war, love, and combinations of the two. This is her debut Circlet
story, and she has enjoyed fording the river of erotic fiction for
the first time, as well as shamelessly working another Oregon Trail
reference into this paragraph.

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Like An Iron Fist: Dystopian Erotica
edited by Katherine Bergeron & Cecilia Tan
ISBN: 978-10885865-63-2
Price: $5.99

Dystopias are never precisely the opposite
of utopias–they are closer to being failed
“perfected” societies than evil empires by
design. And one of the first orders of
business for a fledgling dystopia is to figure
out what to do about sex. Ban its non-
reproductive forms like 1984? Encourage
no-strings-attached orgies like Brave New
World? Allow sexual variety only for an
elite like The Handmaid’s Tale? The most
bloodthirsty dictatorship can never entirely

eradicate the most primal of urges. The
stories of Like an Iron Fist burn with the
smothered passions of the silenced and the
oppressed. Read them before it’s too late…

Apocalypse Sex: Love At The End Of The World

edited by Jennifer Levine
ISBN: 978-1-885865-39-7
Price: $4.99

With their own demise staring them in the
face, the characters in Apocalypse Sex all
come to the same conclusion: it’s time to
have the best sex of their lives. Inhibitions
are cast aside and fantasies are fulfilled as
the doomed chase down their deepest
desires. With stories by J. Daniel Sawyer,
Elizabeth Coldwell, Elizabeth Schechter,
Beverly Langland, and David Hubbard.

more titles you may enjoy from Circlet Press!

more titles you may enjoy from Circlet Press!

Like A Mask Removed I: Superheroes
edited by Bethany Zaiatz
ISBN: 978-1-885865-89-2
Price: $6.99

You don’t have to be an evil genius to know
superheroes are hot, and not just because
of the perfect bodies clad in spandex. Like
a Mask Removed, Volume I presents seven

stories ranging from vibrant romps
reminiscent of the colorful comic book
pages they are inspired by to modern
experimental literary styles. Includes Lauren
P. Burka. Angela Caperton, Tom Cardamone,

Michael M. Jones, and more.

Like A Mask Removed II: Supervillains
edited by Bethany Zaiatz
ISBN: 978-1-885865-90-8
Price: $6.99

Although the battles of good versus evil
found in comic books tug at our primal,
childhood selves, these same primal urges
lead us to exploring the erotic side of
heroes—and villains. Five new, previously
unpublished, original stories of the
smoldering dynamics found between noble,
honorable, well-meaning superheroes and
their provocative nemeses. With Sophie
Mouette, Raven Kaldera, and others.