“It’s very important that you get the whole story out of her,” Senior Officer Kitteridge explained, while Kristen scrolled through the dauntingly long file full of questions and guidelines for Officer Deacon’s performance evaluation.

“Yes, sir,” Kristen nodded. “But what story, exactly? I thought this was just an annual review.”

“It… is,” said Officer Kitteridge, in a tone that said this was the shortest possible version of a very long answer.

He was a skinny, brittle-looking man in his fifties, with an energetic warmth to him that made Kristen feel like he was about to explain a complex mathematical principle with lots of enthusiastic pounding on a blackboard.

“Your mentor has had a busy year,” he said, leaning forward against his desk. “We’re fairly sure she’s been working off the books with an outsider to improve some of the Bureau’s systems. We appreciate her initiative, and I, for one, would bet that her secretiveness comes from perfectionism. I’m sure she’s waiting for what she thinks is the right moment to present her work. Still, the fact that she didn’t consider it worth keeping her superiors in the loop all along frankly doesn’t reflect well on anyone.”

He punctuated his explanation with an awkward, patient smile.

“I’m glad you decided to spend your points on conducting the session,” the senior officer went on. “She seems to trust you. If you can convince her to share her findings in detail now, we’re willing to overlook the… unconventional order of her actions. If she holds out any longer, however, and what she’s done comes out some other way, we won’t be able to excuse her.”

“I understand,” Kristen nodded more seriously. “I won’t let you down.”

#

“She’s been in sensory deprivation for most of a day, and we’ve administered appropriate doses of sildenafil, sodium thiopental, and MDMA,” Senior Officer Kitteridge summarized as two other officers guided Officer Deacon into the visitor room, each of them supporting her under one arm. “She’ll be a little out of it, but also extremely aroused, and about as cooperative as a standardized formula can make a person.”

One of the other officers pulled Officer Deacon’s dress up over the open back of her chastity device, exposing her ass. Together, they slowly maneuvered her over the visitor’s chair. Kristen only then noticed the complicated-looking metal probe that had been anchored to the seat. It was thinner than any of the disciplinary plugs she had been trained on, and it had a cage of thick wires surrounding its central shaft.

“The probe detects involuntary anal clenching,” said Officer Kitteridge, “which often accompanies attempts at deception. When that happens, it will notify you,” he pointed to one of the functions of the eval app on Kristen’s tablet screen, “and it’ll give her a little zap, just a mild deterrent.”

The other officers lowered Officer Deacon onto the pre-lubricated probe.

Officer Deacon responded with a giggle that did not match the voice Kristen was used to hearing from her mouth.

“It’s cold!” Officer Deacon half-complained, jokingly slapping one of the other officers on the shoulder before relaxing down into the seat and allowing her hands to be cuffed to its legs.

“You’ll also have control over her personal favorite form of stimulation,” said Officer Kitteridge, holding up a small disk. The surface of one side was covered in a bulge of silicone, with a hole in the middle. “Give it a try.”

Kristen tapped the command on the tablet that he pointed to, and the disk began to vibrate in pulses, its hole undulating in a sucking motion.

Officer Deacon’s eyes openly followed the disk. She didn’t seem capable of even trying to disguise her longing.

Officer Kitteridge turned the vibrations off, tapped another command, and then touched his keycard to the sensor on Officer Deacon’s device. A slit opened near the top of the device’s front panel, just wide enough to slide the disk into place.

Moisture rushed to Kristen’s own locked-away pussy in sympathy, as she imagined that little silicone orifice sitting motionless, right in front of Officer Deacon’s long-denied and now chemically sensitized clit.

“She’ll be extremely physically responsive,” said Officer Kitteridge, “so I recommend giving her only one pulse at a time, whenever she shares useful information. Remind her as often as you need to that you’ll turn the device on for a full minute once we’ve gotten everything we need.”

Kristen nodded, not trusting her voice.

The excitement she’d felt for this session had grown heavier in her stomach the more she’d learned about the protocol. She couldn’t help wondering if all the other trainees who had signed up to evaluate their mentors were being made to do it in the same way.

Was this really something all officers went through every year, or every few years? Was getting drugged out of her mind with a lie-detecting electrode up her ass something Kristen had to look forward to herself, once she completed her training? Or was the investigation into Officer Deacon a lot less routine than she was being led to believe?

Neither possibility was pleasant, and she doubted she’d get a useful answer by asking now.

The important thing today was just to get this all straightened out as painlessly as possible. Whatever the higher-ups were so worked up about not knowing, it couldn’t be that bad. Officer Deacon might be a touch more lenient than the rulebook, but all in all, she was devoted and effective at her job.

“Keep on track with the questions in the file, and you’ll be fine,” said Officer Kitteridge, opening the wall panel with the camera and turning it on. “I’ll be watching on the feed, so just call out if you need me.”

With that, he motioned for the other two officers to follow him, and left Kristen and Officer Deacon alone.

Officer Deacon smiled vaguely across the steel table at Kristen.

“So.” Kristen took a breath and scrolled to the top of the list of questions on her tablet. “When was the first time you came in contact with the individual who goes by the name Artemis?”

#

Officer Leila Deacon fed the surgical-grade ring through the new piercing in her subject’s urethra, right under the head of his penis, and closed the ends into a perfect circle. She applied the high-speed healing gel to help his skin close around the new, metal intrusion, careful not to overstimulate the sensitive area.

“There, that was the painful part,” she informed the man, whose face relaxed out of the wince it had frozen into over the course of the procedure.

“Thank you for your mercy,” he breathed.

“If you can call it that,” said Leila. “You chose the worst deal I offered you. Once I finish installing the integrated chastity backup, you’ll never be able to feel genital stimulation without paying for a full unlocking again. No more opening up just the front of your cage for some quick automated pumping. No more cheap, easy orgasms. Unless you can save up the points to have the backup permanently removed, of course, but that’s a lot more expensive than the debt credit you’re getting for having it installed in the first place.”

“I need it,” the man insisted. “It’s the only way I’ll be able to stop trying to cum. I have to know that it’s hopeless.”

“Oh, it will certainly be hopeless,” said Leila. “Whether you’re smart enough to accept that remains to be seen.”

She closed the steel cap of the backup around the end of his cock, fed the security bolt through the piercing, and tapped her ID card to the sensor to lock it. With only a tiny hole at the end and no give to allow for internal friction, there was no way he could pleasantly tickle himself now, not from the outside.

That little cap of metal could almost have served as a replacement for full standard chastity device, but according to policy, it was called a backup for a reason.

Leila fed the subject’s capped dick back into its standard cage, reattached the cage to the belt of his device, and secured that with her card as well.

“I want to see you back here for a hygiene check next week,” she reminded him.

“Yes, officer,” said the man.

#

“And this man, he called himself Artemis?” Kristen asked, confused.

“He did?” asked Officer Deacon. “When?”

“Never mind,” said Kristen. “But if he’s not Artemis, why did you bring him up?”

Officer Deacon blinked, and seemed to forget that there was a question on the table.

“You are incandescent,” she said, swaying in her seat. “I’ve never told you that, have I? You are.”

“Artemis,” Kristen pushed. “You were going to tell us how you met someone called Artemis.”

“I was?”

“We know you were only working for the good of the Bureau,” Kristen assured her. “But for the sake of your career, we need to get the record straight.”

“That sounds… false,” said Officer Deacon, uncertainly.

The screen of Kristen’s tablet glowed.

Get her attention, a message scrolled across the top of the eval app, no doubt from Officer Kitteridge.

Reluctantly, Kristen pushed the button to administer a shock to Officer Deacon’s unclenched ass. She jumped and strained against the handcuff chains, as if she could escape the probe, and then rubbed her hips against the chair, looking for an impossible resolution to the fresh tingling in her nerves.

“All right!” she shouted irritably. “All right. Artemis.”

#

Leila kept swatting away the persistent feeling that she was doing something wrong by taking the elevator all the way to the ground floor and walking across the street, into the bar on the other side.

Ever since she’d started her training at the Bureau, she had rarely left the building. Her work was there, her room was there, her friends were there, and some manner of satisfaction for all her basic needs could be found there.

There was no rule confining her, or anyone else who wasn’t in debt, to the premises, however. There didn’t need to be. The Bureau’s control could follow her anywhere, in the form of the device chained over her pelvis. That was the whole point.

As soon as she stepped into the dimly lit establishment, she became aware of the way her uniform dress clung to her body, especially around the outline of her device. That was something she rarely thought about anymore at home, where the uniforms far outnumbered street clothes.

Here, everyone was in thick jeans, or loose skirts, or dresses with stiff paneling around the hips.

Committed now, Leila slid onto one of the cushioned stools at the bar itself. The bartender, a large, bearded man, slid a card across the polished wooden surface to her with a welcoming nod, and then returned to arranging a tray of garnishes.

Leila picked up the sturdy white card and flipped it over. There was nothing on it but a small logo for the bar itself.

“What is this?” she asked, in the same tone she’d used to ask her last subject about the latest screwdriver scratches on his device. Maybe her officer’s bravado would shield her from how ridiculous she was probably about to feel.

“Oh,” said the bartender, turning around again. “Have you never…? You just tap it to your… um….”

“He needs you to sync it to your point counter,” said a woman, hoisting herself onto the stool next to Leila’s. “Alcohol is an indulgence, you know.”

The woman accepted another card from the bartender and slipped it down the front of her jeans, behind her grommet-lined belt. Her leather jacket opened with the gesture, showing the simple white camisole underneath. Her frame was undisguisedly thick and curvy, with almost a hand’s length of visible cleavage.

Leila was used to all sorts of fully naked bodies, and of course the clingy and short uniforms of her colleagues, but revealing civilian clothes were a novelty. Most people, women especially, tended to cover up in public to avoid accusations of piling onto someone else’s frustration. Leila would have bet every point on her counter that this woman considered other people’s thoughts on her appearance to be a them problem.

The corner of the woman’s mouth lifted, and she blinked a little more purposefully than normal, more of a wink with both eyes. Every line of her makeup was bold, dark, and precise.

“First time?” she asked Leila, handing the card back to the bartender. “You don’t look like you just turned nineteen.”

“I don’t go out much,” said Leila, tapping her card to her device through her light uniform dress and passing it back across the bar.

“You’re authorized for up to five drinks at ten points each,” the bartender read from his tablet, holding the card to an attached sensor. “Just let me know what you want whenever you’re ready.”

“Five? Damn, you really don’t go out, do you?” said the woman, glancing up and down at Leila’s uniform and ID card. “I always assumed you pleasure control officers were secretly wild hedonists.”

“You can have up to two,” the bartender told the woman, checking her synced card.

“Almost makes you wish for the days when one person could buy another a drink, doesn’t it?” said the woman, pulling an elastic out of her dark auburn hair and shaking it out. “I’ll have a Cosmo.”

“The same,” Leila told the bartender, rather than try to remember the name of anything else. There was an annoying lack of menus around, only a list of beers, which she had never cared for.

“At least two people can have a drink, in the same place, at the same time,” said the woman. “If that’s all right with you?”

Leila had come here with every intention of sitting alone until she could stand the thought of walking back to headquarters, and then doing so, unnoticed. Presented with the offer of company, however, she found herself unwilling to turn it down.

The bartender set down two martini glasses, with the rims touching, and poured in the pink liquid from the shaker in perfectly equal portions.

“Leila,” said Leila, raising her glass to the woman.

“Artemis,” the woman raised hers in reply. “What’s the occasion, Leila?”

Leila glanced at her drink and back at Artemis, wondering if this particular cocktail had a special occasion association, like champagne.

“You never go out,” Artemis explained. “And now you are. Did you paddle your millionth ass today, or something?”

Leila took a sip of the pleasantly bittersweet drink, set it down, and stared down at the rest, rotating the glass by its bottom.

“Something like that.”

“I’m slightly more curious now than I already was,” said Artemis.

Leila took another sip.

“I was capping off the dick of this guy, this chronic would-be escape artist who can’t take a hit,” said Leila. She tried to practice the disdainful tone she’d use if she were reporting on his session to a superior, but for now, the words came out defeated. “Right as I was locking the bolt through his piercing, I just… I couldn’t see the point. I know he’s going to be right back in my visitor room next week. And I can make him clean every bathroom in that building naked, or I can cane the living tar out of this guy who cries when I approach him with a feather flogger, but either way, he’ll try again. He always tries again.” She sighed. “So his new device is harder to get out of. So what? He never got out of his standard cage anyway, no matter how hard he tried. The only difference is now he could really hurt himself in the process.”

Artemis listened intently. “So, you thought you’d go stretch your legs and ask a glass of alcohol whether you’re accomplishing anything with your life,” she continued the story with razor precision. “Has it answered yet?”

#

“You were considering leaving?” Kristen asked breathlessly.

“I don’t know,” Officer Deacon answered, with no shock from the probe. “Maybe. Maybe I only needed a break. A fresh perspective.”

“But you found it, right?” said Kristen. “You talked with Artemis, and together you decided to rededicate yourselves to a project to benefit the Bureau… didn’t you?”

#

Leila didn’t question it when Artemis took her hand, exchanged knowing nods with the bartender, and led the way down the hall toward the bathrooms.

After all, what could possibly happen? Nothing serious enough to get worked up about.

Artemis turned off the main hallway through two unmarked doors. The first brought them to what looked like a junk storage room, with an old industrial sink and lots of precarious rows of broken furniture and empty bottles, perhaps awaiting sorting and recycling.

The second door opened onto what had definitely been a supply cupboard in the architect’s original plans. It had since been repurposed with a loveseat and a string of twinkling white lights overhead.

“It’s quiet in here,” said Artemis. “Best seat in the house to…” she smiled, “talk.”

She had barely finished the last word when Leila kissed her.

The two of them sank onto the loveseat, Leila dragging the door closed behind them.

The kiss did not stop for many minutes, only deepened, accompanied by the constant, stirring movement of hands. Leila reached under Artemis’s jacket to stroke the softness of her body through her camisole, and Artemis sat up on her knees to bring Leila’s mouth down to her breasts.

“Yes, a nice place to talk,” Leila agreed with her lips still on one of Artemis’s breasts, working her way down to the rim of her pleasure-proof pastie. “But not much else.”

“You’re not bored of me already, are you?” Artemis asked against Leila’s neck.

“Of you? No,” Leila answered.

“Good.” Artemis reached under Leila’s skirt and flicked the front panel of her chastity device, making it reverberate against her inner hips. When Leila responded with an excited intake of breath, Artemis leaned down and ran her tongue over the same spot she had flicked. Leila could almost feel the warmth of her tongue. Almost.

“Do you…” Leila returned to the point she’d been trying to make, “want to go across the street with me instead?”

“And invite some pleasure control officer to ruin all this privacy?” Artemis laughed, stroking Leila’s thigh. “No thanks.”

Leila was in no hurry to see any of her colleagues or the inside of the building again either, but the heat growing under her device was reaching the point where it would be worth it. She was hoping Artemis felt more or less the same.

“Well, I am an officer,” Leila noted. “I could conduct a session for you. Just the two of us. I’d still be locked up of course, but then….”

“I don’t like being ordered around,” said Artemis bluntly, pulling off her jacket. “Not even a hottie like you is going to change that.”

“Then what do you usually do?” Leila asked. “When you need release?”

“This,” answered Artemis, kissing her again.

With their lips still locked together, Artemis unfastened her belt and jeans and pulled them down over her ample hips. She reached back under Leila’s skirt, this time cupping her ass, and guided Leila’s hand to mirror her.

Kneeling on the loveseat, with their legs alternating between each other, Artemis’s fingers skimmed lightly along the sensitive skin at the open back of Leila’s device. She caressed the valleys under and between her cheeks, and finally gave her hole a questioning little tickle with one fingertip.

Leila had been caressing Artemis’s ass in response, but at this, she paused.

“You don’t like it?” asked Artemis.

“I’ll never be able to cum this way,” said Leila.

“Of course not,” said Artemis. “Do you need to?”

Leila tried to make sense of the question.

“Oh, babe, I know you want to,” said Artemis, running the fingers of her free hand through Leila’s hair. “Me too. I’d make it happen for both of us if I could, believe me. But is an orgasm the only thing that would make spending this time with me worth the trouble for you?”

Leila thought for a moment, shook her head, and poised her finger over Artemis’s hole, situated deeper between her rounder cheeks.

With a grin and a kiss on Leila’s neck, Artemis pushed her way inside, millimeter by millimeter, sending an electric thrill up Leila’s back.

Leila’s training and discipline had involved stretching her ass with much larger tools than a single finger, of course, but there was something undeniably new about the warmth, the movement, the aliveness of Artemis’s touch.

Likewise, Leila could not remember ever having entered another body with her bare hands before. Reaching into soft, delicate tissue that no one had ever seen with the naked eye, feeling it directly with the nerves of her own skin — it felt wickedly secret. It felt like being trusted, by someone who had a choice.

“Tell me when you can’t take anymore,” Artemis whispered. “Until then, just enjoy it.” She slid a second finger into Leila’s ass and stretched them in opposite directions. “No goal, no ending, just us, like this. Just adrenaline and dopamine, intimacy and free pleasure, because that is what you’re feeling, isn’t it? Right now?”

Leila considered the tingling rush of sensation, washing over her whole body, bubbling up wherever Artemis brushed her free hand, and could not think of any other name for it.

She did her best to keep up, penetrating Artemis with the same moves and enthusiasm she was receiving, kissing her tirelessly, lifting her generous breasts out of their camisole to touch every bit of skin available. She brushed her thumb over the pasties at the end, miming and suggesting impossible stimulation, the way Artemis had along the outside of her device.

Time slipped out of focus. With no progress or endpoint, the subtle pleasures of skin and breath and closeness were almost impossible to pull away from.

At some point, Leila began grinding the front of her device against Artemis’s thigh, as if she might finally get the leverage that she needed to rub her rock-hard clit.

The inside of her domed pelvic plate remained just out of reach, as always.

When she realized how much pressure she must have been putting on Artemis’s flesh, how hard she was causing the device to dig into her own joints, she tried to ease up, to shift to a different movement, but the urge in her hips wouldn’t quiet.

Reluctantly, she leaned away from Artemis’s lips and sat back on her heels, still.

“That’s it for me,” she said.

Artemis’s fingers stopped thrusting and withdrew, leaving Leila empty. Leila pulled her own fingers out as well.

“How do you feel?” asked Artemis, attention still fixed on her as firmly as it had been from the moment they’d met.

“Amazing,” Leila admitted, head swimming with a potent mix of trapped chemicals, the string of lights above her twinkling as if she’d had much more than one drink. “…And awful.”

“Come on,” said Artemis getting up from the couch and pulling her clothes back into place. “We can still do something about that.”

“Such as?” Leila asked dubiously, blinking in the light as Artemis opened the door of their little closet retreat.

Artemis wove through the rows of glass and furniture to the sink and beckoned Leila to follow her. They washed their hands in silence, the water seeming to sparkle brighter and brush Leila’s skin more forcefully than usual.

Finally, Artemis picked up one of the empty wine bottles and walked over to the far corner of the room, which Leila now saw was clear of clutter, except for a thin layer of broken glass and splinters on the floor.

Safety goggles were lined up nearby on a scratched old cabinet.

Artemis pulled on a pair and handed another to Leila, who did the same.

“How did you know about all this?” Leila asked.

Artemis smiled mysteriously, winding up with the wine bottle. “Every good community hangout needs a secret menu.” She let the bottle fly and shatter against the scarred wall. “Go on.”

Leila picked up a jar that might have once held candied cherries. Deciding that it would be pointless to start feeling self-conscious again now, she lined up her hand and arm, just as she would with a whip, and threw the jar as hard as she could into the precise corner of the room.

“Yeah!” Artemis clapped. “How about now?”

“A… little better,” Leila appraised herself aloud.

“Here, try something bigger.”

Artemis positioned an off-kilter bar stool in front of Leila, and retrieved a long, heavy pipe from the goggle cabinet for her.

Leila knocked one of the stool’s legs off in one hit. Feeling the impact and watching the piece clatter to the floor made her body feel just a little less useless.

“Do you really never come in to the Bureau?” Leila asked, awe creeping in as she caught herself believing that this might actually be possible. “This is how you always have sex? Smashing things at the end instead of—”

“Don’t think about what it’s instead of,” said Artemis. “Just do it.”

Leila just did it, shattering glass and bashing wood, until she was too physically exhausted to be horny. The floating, sensual, almost drugged feeling from the touch of Artemis’s skin outlasted the frustration.

Leila did not realize until she was undressing in her room back at headquarters that her ID badge was missing.

#

“She stole your badge?” Kristen summed up.

Officer Deacon swung her head around in a bleary circle that was probably a nod.

“Did you report it?” asked Kristen.

Officer Deacon gasped at a jolt from the electrode, as she tried to formulate an answer.

“You didn’t,” Kristen guessed.

Officer Deacon shook her head, and Kristen tapped the button to give her one, brief, vibrating suck from the disk. She moaned and whined with animalistic abandon.

“How did you replace the badge?” Kristen asked, hoping this might finally lead toward the story of whatever secret project was supposed to make up for Officer Deacon’s transgressions.

Another jolt from the electrode cut off Officer Deacon’s attempt at spinning a story.

“I told the print guy I’d damaged it,” she said. “I promised to go easy on him in his next visitor room session if he made me a new one without filing a report. I said it was embarrassing.”

“Why?”

“Because it was embarrassing,” said Officer Deacon. “And dangerous. If I told anyone how I lost it, I’d end up answering questions about who I was with and why.” She tossed her head back and laughed, slowly straightening up to face the camera. “So glad I decided not to do that, right?”

“Did you know that someone used your badge to access the server room three days later?” Kristen asked, first reading the note on the file twice to be sure.

“No.”

A jolt.

“Yes!” Officer Deacon snapped at the electrode. “Yes, I know now, but no, I didn’t know then. I didn’t hear anything more from Artemis until almost a month after that.”

#

“I wasn’t expecting to see you in here,” Leila said, entering the visitor room to meet the next subject in her queue. “I believed you, when you said you could stay away indefinitely, if you broke enough things. But then, I also believed that you had no ulterior motives for keeping a burnt-out officer company for a couple hours.”

“Oh, good,” said Artemis, turning toward her, her jeans-clad legs stretching apart with the motion. “You’re talking about that. So, I take it the recording equipment in this room isn’t on yet?”

Leila took the seat across from Artemis and leaned hard against the table between them.

“Why do you care if it’s on?” she asked. “Swearing off orgasms is within your rights under the law. What do you have to hide?”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble, Officer,” Artemis answered. “Believe it or not.”

“How would you get me in trouble?” asked Leila, her lack of concern sounding a little less convincing in her own ears than usual.

Artemis cracked a laugh. “Seriously? Okay.”

“That’s a fifty-point penalty,” Leila pointed out, “for failing to answer a direct question from an officer.” She entered the command on her tablet to dock Artemis’s total.

Artemis did not swallow and turn pale as so many new subjects did when confronted with the hefty consequences of their lapses of respect, but she did adjust course.

“You want an answer, here,” she said, pulling a data chip from an inner pocket of her jacket and placing it on the steel table.

“What’s this?” asked Leila

“A virus,” Artemis answered easily. “One that I need you to install on Rose Daimler’s tablet the next time you work on her. Can I get fifty strokes with a clit wand, by the way? I wouldn’t want you to have to explain an empty appointment.”

She could afford it.

Leila took a breath, opened the wall panel behind her, and retrieved a wand. When she turned back toward Artemis, her jeans were already down around her knees.

With a tap of her tablet and a touch of her ID card, Leila prompted Artemis’s chastity device to open the tiny hole near the top of its front panel, where the wand would fit. She tore off its sterile paper cover and fed the rigid, silicone-cushioned length down into place, where it would rest right against her clit.

There was no way, Leila thought, that someone could get their clit touched for the first time in who knew how many years, and still keep the same cocky expression Artemis was currently scaring her with.

Artemis drew in a tremulous breath when the wand made contact, and then another when she rocked her hips to take her first grinding stroke against it. It clicked to keep count.

“Oh, I could get used to this,” Artemis moaned. “Too, too easily.”

She did not get lost in the race to the finish line, however.

“I know…” click, “mmm, that Rose likes you.” Click. “And that she’s connected enough to get you whenever she wants stimulation.”

“If that were true,” said Leila, picking up the data chip and turning it between her fingers. “Why would I break her trust for you?”

“Please,” Artemis scoffed, still thrusting against the wand. “I know you believe our society could stand to be less… absolute.”

“Are you telling me that’s what this would do?” asked Leila, twirling the chip.

“Rose Daimler,” click, “is the Bureau Director’s wife.” Click. “I’m willing to bet that he’s shared a lot of access with her,” click, “maybe more than he realizes, so that she can help him with work.”

Leila set the chip flat on the table and covered it with her palm.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Giving people an alternative,” said Artemis.

“An alternative to pleasure control?” asked Leila. “To the point system? You’re going to do something to undermine the power of the Bureau? And you expect me to go along with it because… what? Because it doesn’t always feel perfect to me? Without even knowing what you plan to replace it with?”

“Sure,” said Artemis. “If that turns you on.”

“What does that mean?”

“If it makes you feel sexy to help me disrupt your fucked up system, great,” said Artemis.

She closed her eyes for a moment, sighing in time with the treat between her legs. “Oh. Oh yes.”

She braced herself on the table, and her next exclamation became a screech of triumph as much as pleasure.

Finished, she looked back up at Leila with a smile. “But it’s not like you have a choice here. I mean, you do. You always have a choice. But the alternative is you stop helping me, and your superiors find out how much help you’ve already been.”

#

“…That’s when she told me she’d already accessed the server,” Officer Deacon concluded. “She was only missing the decryption for the highest clearance levels. That’s what she wanted from Mrs. Daimler.”

Kristen felt sweaty. Her heart was thumping in her throat.

There was no secret project that the Bureau would approve of. They had probably never even though there might be. This was it. This was all they had been looking for.

Kristen didn’t want to ask the next obvious question. She couldn’t think of any way not to. “You helped her get the decryption?”

Officer Deacon nodded sleepily.

“Can I cum now?” she asked, folding her arms on the table to give herself a pillow, though her head was restless against it. “Please?”

With hands that felt like lead, Kristen tapped the button to start the disk and leave it on.

The disk emitted low, audible thrums as it gently sucked Officer Deacon’s clit, sending pulses of vibration deep below the surface. Kristen had read ahead on how these sorts of tools worked, but could only imagine how amazing they must feel.

Officer Deacon scratched at the smooth surface of the table, moaning so high and helplessly that Kristen couldn’t even tell quite when the orgasm started. She could only tell when it ended, almost a minute into the stimulation. Officer Deacon panted and almost choked with relief, and then made a new sound of resistance against the continued suction.

Kristen turned the device off, with a sense that this was the last, closest thing to a pleasant moment the officer would enjoy for a long time.

She had wanted for so long to give Officer Deacon any kind of pleasure, let alone such a powerful-looking dose, but she doubted that either of them would be glad about it tomorrow. Officer Deacon might not even remember.

The file for the eval had not come with any instructions for what happened after the final reward, so Kristen just sat there with her mentor, waiting for someone to come in and… calculate her debt? What would that even look like for something like this?

The door opened, and in less than a second, a group of six tall figures flooded into the room, each one dressed in black armor from head to toe, carrying what Kristen knew from movies to be shotguns. She had never seen one in person.

“Officer Leila Deacon, you will accompany us,” said one of the armored figures, unlocking her handcuffs to remove her from the chair.

Kristen didn’t recognize the voice. The group could have been all strangers, or all people she had seen around headquarters at one time or another. Their stocking masks and shape-distorting gear made it impossible to tell.

“W… where?” Kristen asked, voice weakening as she eyed the bodies, and weapons, closing in around her mentor. “Where are you taking her?”

Only one of the six looked at her. None of them answered.

Before Kristen could gather the strength to ask again, the lights cut out, even the little recording light on the camera, leaving the room in blackness.

A soft hand with a ring on one finger grabbed Kristen’s wrist and pulled her in the direction of the door.

Out in the hallway, she could just make out Zach’s profile in the flashing emergency lights. Twice he pushed her into perpendicular passages to avoid smaller groups, pairs and trios, of figures in body armor and masks.

“What’s—” she started to ask.

He pulled her up short as they reached the trainee cafeteria, just as the opposite wall exploded inward with a bang and an overpowering smell of smoke.

“What—” Kristen started again, then broke off coughing.

“Now or never, baby bureaucrats!” Piper shouted, riding the end of a ladder into place on the outside of the blown-open wall. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of those things once we’re safe.”

“Come on.” Zach pulled Kristen toward the ladder, where a few of their classmates were already lining up to take Piper’s hand. Other were shouting questions.

“Come on and what?” Kristen asked, unwilling to understand.

“The entire Bureau server has been breached!” Zach hissed. “This place is about to get sealed up tight and turned upside-down while they try to get everything under control. This is our only chance.”

“Are you working with Artemis?” asked Kristen.

“Who?”

“Whatever her real name is! The one who hacked the server.”

“You know who did that?”

“It wasn’t you guys? The rebels, or whatever you call yourselves?”

“No!” said Zach. “It fucked up every plan we had! I was supposed to stay and work my way up to officer! It doesn’t matter now, we have to go!”

“I can’t,” Kristen dug in her heels.

“You’ll be okay,” said Zach, grabbing her other hand, unable to move her. “We, the ‘rebels,’” he whispered the word even over the chaos around them, “we’ve got places. A decent setup. You’d be free there.” He brought her hand to the chain on her hip.

“I can’t leave her here alone,” Kristen explained.

“Who, Officer Deacon?” Zach let out a humorless chuckle. “She’s a piece of the machine. A machine you don’t owe anything to.”

“She’s not who you think she is,” Kristen insisted. “And now they know that. And it’s my fault. She got caught being a person because of me.”

“We don’t have time.” Zach pulled. Kristen didn’t budge.

“I know,” she said.

Zach let go. He glanced at Piper, who was helping the next person onto the rungs next to her, and then back at Kristen. He held up his ring, the source of secret release she’d been relying on for weeks. “Do you want me to unlock you before we go?”

His voice was hoarse, possibly from the smoke and dust in the air. Possibly not.

Kristen shook her head. “I can’t get caught like that.”

“Zach!” Piper shouted from the ladder. “You two coming?”

Kristen kissed Zach once more on the mouth. “Good luck,” she said, taking a step back.

Zach barely looked at the rubble in front of him as he made his way across to Piper. He was still looking back at Kristen when he grabbed the side of the ladder and began to climb on.

“You too,” he said.

***

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