Her mission back on track, Jane Masters returns to The House to pursue the downfall of Red Fist. CAUTION: sexual content

CHAPTER THREE: continued

The next day, as was my right, I returned to the Red Fist house on the hill. All the dancers, all the hostesses, all the prostitutes in the town were Red Fist employees. The local economy operated in this way. The town a whore, pimped by the massive criminal brute that was the Red Fist of Justice. No questions were asked. That was how it worked. Who was I to argue? I simply had a job to do. I'd decided the plan as had danced last night, my jewelled body in the lights burning as bright as the thoughts dancing like quicksilver through my head.

I developed the plan in my mind while shaking my breasts and bum at the sweating punters to the pounding music in the small, tacky nightclub with the sticky floors. Hands reached out from the audience to grope me and thrust notes in my waistband and I drifted, working out the mechanics of how I would bring the Red Fist down. I whirled round and round the pole and strode up and down the runway in my silver stilettoes as I worked out how exactly I'd make my way back into the house, the restricted zone, get the mission information back to MI6 in Vauxhall, unlock the secret of room 497 and put an end to Sato. I knew by now that there was little likelihood of escaping alive, although I reckoned that if I managed to get back to town, I might be able to organise something through the vague notion of involving the gangster and/or Shibata. Escape was a secondary consideration to me now, though. The only drive was to complete my mission. No one said anything about getting out alive.

As I danced and polished my plan like the dazzling Jewel I'd become, I began to think that Sato had done me a favour. She was right - the process of torture had stripped away my Self. Washed my identity away like a leaf fallen into a cold, clear stream in a mountain pass. But what was left was not Jewel, airhead shemale whore, as Sato had intended, but something far harder and shinier. Jewel was the chrysalis, a transitional stage that I had inhabited while the metamorphosis initiated by my brutalisation had taken place. I had now emerged from the chrysalis the very essence of a cold, perfect, ruthless super-spy. Pierce was gone - just another identity to be worn then discarded. A mask. Jewel too, a brief pupal half-life. What is revealed when the last mask of humanity is removed? I knew the answer now. The primal, female essence of the killer that I had now become. Faceless, graceful, and quite deadly. I was ready.

The house was before me as the shuttle bus pulled up the hillside path. Alongside me were fellow catsuited young women, pawns in the Red Fist's game. The bus pulled up at the massive iron gates and a laser scanned the identity bar on the windshield. The gates creaked open. It was a hot, clear day, the sky a dazzling azure that blended to a pitiless cobalt blue as it merged with the sea far below us. No wind at all, and humid. The aircon in the bus barely compensating. The bus rumbled up the final switchbacks and I contemplated the house, taking in the layout of the grotesque building, the location of the airstrip cut into the hillside.

Soon the bus pulled into the shade of the carport and the string of girls debarked, me included, blending seamlessly among the crowd of ravishing showgirls - blondes, brunettes, redheads. What was Akaguchi up to, gathering all these Western women around him? And where was Akaguchi himself? Would I get a go at him or had Sato disposed of him already? The nanite transmitter signature in our blood passed us through the security system than we all dispersed our different ways, some giggling and happy, others seemingly thoughful. I made my way quickly up to Habitation 4 and my room.

****

From my room, I called Trish. After a few minutes, she knocked on my door and I let her in. She was wearing a stunning, yellow, off the shoulder asymmetric swimsuit, her straight red hair tied back in a perky ponytail. She grinned as she saw my admiring reaction "Day off," she said.

I sat her down on the bed and knelt down next to her, looking into her eyes. "Look," I said. "I need you to get out of here. It's going to get very dangerous very fast if things go according to plan and I don't want you getting hurt. Not after what you did for me."

Her bottom lip stuck out. "I can look after myself, sugar."

I grasped her hands in mine, looking into her blue eyes. "Please. You don't know what you're mixed up in. Just find a way to get out of here." I stood and walked over to the window, looking out at the bright blue sky. "I dunno - go down to the town - get Shibata to find you passage to the UK. But for my sake, please go. You're my friend Trish. I've lost too many in my life so far."

She looked up at me from the bed. For all her brassy attitude and model looks, she looked very vulnerable at that moment. What was it with me and redheads? First Christine, then bloody Mary Dwyer, now her.

"OK," she said presently, smiling sadly. "For your sake..."

She pursed her lips, reaching into the small blue purse around her shoulder and pulling out a smartcard. "Here," she said, handing it to me. "You might need this." I raised an inquiring eyebrow. "It's the pass key to flight deck 7. Just in case you can fly an aircraft and need to make a fast escape, Ms. Superspy," she said, grinning.

"Thanks," I said, palming the card. "Look, you'd better go."

She got up. "Will you get in touch?" she said softly, putting her hand on my arm. "Y'know, after all this?"

"Of course I will," I said. I didn't want to tell her that I probably wouldn't even survive the day.

"OK honey," she said, leaning in and pecking me on the cheek. She turned to walk away, then paused, looking back at me over her shoulder.

"Will you become a man again?" she asked in a very quiet voice. "Could you?"

I didn't speak for a very long time.

When I answered, my voice was shaking. "I... I can't answer that question... I don't..." I looked down at the ground, unable to go on. Trish walked back over to me, putting her arms around me, hugging me tight.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "It's just that I've never met anyone like you. I fancied you from the moment we first met, but I knew that there was something... different with you from the other girls." She was stroking my back now, and whispering into my ear, "all I'm saying, Jane, is don't worry about what you look like. You'll find someone who'll care for you whoever you seem to be."

I pulled back so that I could look into her face. She looked back, smiling, then leaned her face nearer. I let myself kiss her, and felt myself melting away as her lipstick mingled with mine. Trish started unzipping my catsuit as her lively tongue explored the inside of my mouth.

I stepped out of the catsuit and stood naked except for my thong and my high-heeled sandals as Trish peeled off her swimsuit to reveal her beautiful body. I bent down to unstrap the shoes and she said, "don't - you look kinda sexy like that." I could feel something stirring in my groin and reached eagerly down to pull down my panties, releasing my little cock. Trish sighed with happiness as it popped free, clapping her hands together. "Oh, you are such a treat for a girl who goes both ways!" she breathed, stepping up to me. Her warm hand crept down and started to play with me as our breasts touched. I gasped and closed my eyes as our nipples started to rub together, electric sensation, oh... and I could definitely feel something happening below...

I lay myself back on the bed and arched my back as Trish's talented mouth started to suck and nibble on my erect nipples, which had blown up to the size of jelly beans. Then she moved down and started to nuzzle my pubic area, blowing warm air over my cock, which was continuing to grow as I writhed and fondled my large breasts and teased and tweaked my amazingly sensitive nipples.

I arched my head back like a porno actress and saw us in my dresser mirror, two beautiful women, lithe, tall and big bosomed, intertwined on the bed, sweating in the midday heat, the redhead with her face buried in the blonde's groin, the blonde with her head arched back, eyes half shut, glossy mouth open in an 'O' of ecstasy. The image captivated me and I couldn't tear myself away as Trish sucked my penis deep into her moist mouth and sucked, and teased, and sucked, and nibbled and-

I turned my body around and worked my face down to Trish's warm, musky crotch as she worked my cock and happily buried my nose in the familiar smell of a wet pussy, licking and pulling at her engorged nub. We were so hot... After a very short while, Trish began to scream and buck and soon I felt a glorious warmness spreading from my breasts down to my groin. Here it comes. Here it-

***

Afterwards we lay in each other's arms for a few precious moments, and then I watched as she dressed and left, with a smile and a sad little wave.

I lay there for a while, then got up and looked at myself in the mirror. The familiar, gorgeous, naked blonde smiled back at me, as I bent down to remove my heels. They were killing my feet. I padded into the shower and went over my plan again as the hot water jetted into my pores, massaging my still sensitive nipples.

***

I emerged dripping from the shower and dried off, picking up my catsuit and sandals off the floor and stuffing them in the wardrobe. I drew the blinds and waited for my eyes to acclimatise to the gloom. Then I went over to my desk tablet and after a bit of nosing round the local network, managed to disable the lights and set off an intruder alarm for my room. Quickly, I powered down the tablet and lay down half-in, half-out of the bathroom so that it would look as though I was unconscious or dead when someone came in. I lay there with my eyes half open and breathed shallowly and evenly, waiting.

Not a minute later, I heard someone at the door. It opened and I heard a set of footsteps come in. My visitor tried the light switch with no result, then I heard the footsteps come into the room, then pause. I guess the guard had seen my naked legs projecting from the bathroom doorway.

The footsteps padded right over to me, but I waited and waited. I heard breathing, the rustle of movement. Then a gloved hand on my face.

I snapped my eyes open and exploded off the floor, hitting the guard with the braced heel of my palm to the underside of her jaw as she bent over me. She went over like a shapely sack of spuds. I leapt over her prone body as she struggled to bring her sidearm to bear and landed lightly behind her. Taking her helmeted head from behind in both arms, I twisted and heard the satisfying crack of the neck breaking. She went limp in my arms.

I dragged her over to the tablet and powered it up, pulling her sightless face to the screen. I held her eye open and logged in using her retinal scan. Then I disabled the intruder alert and logged a short error report saying (as the guard) that I had investigated and found nothing unusual.

Turning away from the computer tablet, I quickly stripped the guard of her uniform and put it on myself. Luckily she was quite tall and the neoprene stretched nicely to fit my curves. I tied my long blonde hair up in a bun and concealed it in the bulbous helmet which was loaded with a suite of sensor apparatus. The black gloves and combat boots completed the ensemble. I picked up the flechette gun and checked the load on the digital display mounted above the handgrip. It was full. Good.

A quick recce of the various belt pouches on my black shiny guard's catsuit revealed three more loads of ammo, some computer data slugs, a lipstick (Clinique Berry Buff). I also found three ampoules of clear liquid with tiny bubbles suspended in it, each with a disposable compressed air hypo head. If this was the "access all areas" nanoliquid that had given me entry to the restricted zone previously, then my plan was right on track.

But was I going to chance it? Was I fuck.

I opened the blinds and the door. Blinking in the light, I stepped onto the balcony, looking quickly around. There was quite a lot of activity around the building. Probably too risky to try and dump the guard's body over the balcony into the thick forest below right now. Never mind. I went back in and dragged the corpse under my bed. I wouldn't be around long enough for them to discover it.

Then I went back to the tablet and did a quick search of the personnel records for the location of the working quarters of a certain Irish doctor. A red-headed doctor with whom I had a few words to exchange and who would, I hoped, be the passport to the next phase of my agenda.

****

Dr Mary Dwyer came out of her office on the seventeenth floor in workout clothes, her flaming hair tied back in a loose ponytail. I followed her along the bustling main corridor. There was a small refectory opposite the gymnasium from where I could keep an eye on her. It was awkward because I couldn't, for obvious reasons, remove my helmet so I must have looked rather strange as I sat and quietly sipped some fruit juice through a straw.

She worked out for forty-five minutes then emerged, toweling sweat off her pretty, freckled face. The face I'd made the mistake of trusting. I got up and followed her again as she walked towards the bank of lifts at the end of the floor. As I walked, I got some looks from some of the throng of male technicians on their lunch-breaks. I guess I must have stood out from the other guards a little bit as I was taller and, shall we say, bigger up top than most, and my body must have looked absolutely spectacular in the form fitting black neoprene catsuit.

She got into a lift with some other women and I squeezed in next to her. I could have quite easily killed her there and then.

We alighted on floor 4 and I followed her to her room. She went in and the door clicked shut behind her. I went to the door and listened. After a few seconds, I heard the shower running. To get into the room, I needed to use the dead guard's retinal scan again. You really don't want to know how I accomplished this. It's far too revolting. Let's just say that the key to the door had been in the guard's head and was now squishing about in one of my belt pouches. I unlocked the door. Ugh.

She was in the shower with her back to the door, rinsing soap off her pale, toned body. I'd fancied her, back in that Bicester half-way house. As Anthony Pierce, I'd laid awake fantasising about having her after she'd made me back into a man. I smiled bitterly. No such luck. My train had come so far off the rails that it wasn't even remotely funny. I stepped into the bathroom as she turned the water off.

"Does my bum look big in this?" I said.

She whirled with a little scream.

I raised my gun and motioned for her to be quiet, removing my helmet with my free hand. "Hello Mary," I said, smiling. "We meet again," I went on, slipping into a corny movie villain accent, "but this time, the advantage is mine."

She stood there, covering her rather small breasts and gingery pubes as best she could. "H-how did you get in?" she asked in her Irish lilt.

I shrugged, "Let's just say that I have an eye from a beautiful woman." I gestured with the gun for her to come out into her bedroom. She looked over at her bath towel. I picked it up, but instead of passing it to her, I threw it onto the sodden floor by the shower, where it began to soak up the cooling water. She looked venomously at me then led me out of the bathroom.

I motioned that she should lie face down on the floor with her hands behind her back. I picked up the remote for the roomsystem and turned the aircon right up. "I'm rather warm," I said, "aren't you?"

A cold blast of air hit us and Mary immediately started to shiver, the drops of water on her body evaporating slowly in the icy atmosphere. Goose pimples came up on her back and her teeth started chattering. I sat on the bed next to her prone body and jammed the barrel of the flechette gun into the back of her head. She went rigid.

"This gun fires six kinds of round." I said. "At the moment, it's set to fire normal anti-personnel flechettes. If I pull the trigger, hundreds of tiny explosive darts will emerge at supersonic velocity from the pepperholes in the barrel that's pressed against your skull. Messy, but very effective in close quarters combat. I'm afraid you'd have more than a bad hair day, Mary."

"Wh-what do you want," she said in a ghost of a whisper, through clenched and chattering teeth.

"What's in Room 497?" I asked.

There was a pause.

"I don't know," she replied.

I flicked the arming switch. The gun emitted a chime and clicked and whirred as it loaded rounds into the breech mechanism. I heard her start to sob, quietly. "I hope you're not lying to me, Mary."

"I swear I don't know what's in there. No one's allowed there. I haven't even seen Sato go near there. Please. I don't want to die. I'm telling you the truth. Please, Anthony!"

I stiffened at the mention of that name. I looked down at her shivering, naked body and felt nothing. Aroused neither by the sight of her beautiful curves, nor by the power I had over her.

I felt nothing.

I shrugged and pulled the gun away. She didn't know. I turned the aircon down and opened the windows to let some of the afternoon heat into the room. "Sit up." I said.

She sat, leaning against the bed and wrapping her arms around herself. I sat down next to her. "Why, Mary?"

She sniffed, rubbing her tears away with the back of one hand. "It's very complicated," she said, voice barely above a whisper. I was silent and she took a deep shuddering breath before going on. "It's my father. He was in the Service all his life. He was pretty mixed up, I suppose. A Catholic from Derry, the Bogside. He grew up during The Troubles but married an English girl, joined Her Majesty's Service. What a mess of confusion for a boy from the bogs..."

She stopped for a while, looking out at the blue sky.

"He was one of the first into Baghdad during the first Gulf conflict back in the nineties. I was four, almost five and my mammy wouldn't tell me where my da was. But he was part of a covert cell in Saddam's fortress city sending back targeting telemetry for the cruise attacks. That was where he and his group were infected by a retrovirus. No one knew whether it was one of ours or one of theirs. But I don't think that Iraq had bioweaponry back then. He started to develop symptoms of a progressive degenerative disease ten years later. I was already working for the Service while working on my doctorate and I watched him turning into a living corpse before my eyes. Ma went off the rails. She left us. I tried to get compensation but the government wouldn't listen. Terrible thing was he was locked away in there. I could see the pain in his eyes. But the body had become a useless instrument. I was working for the government bastards that had put my father into this state and then turned their back.

"Then I started hearing about the studies that Professor Lime was doing in Cambridge. Especially the way that he was using nanite systems to create control links between the brain and prosthetic organs. How he'd enabled blind animals to "see", amputees to control limbs. NanoCybernetics. I began to think that perhaps such therapy could be designed that would unlock my father's torment. I tried to contact Lime but he'd disappeared. Defected to the Red Fist. With you. How fucking ironic...

"Soon after that I heard from The Fist. They convinced me that they had made significant advances in Lime's techniques since his defection. In return for working as their mole in the service, they'd treat my father. Give him back his dignity. Of course I agreed. Your reinsertion just happened to coincide with all this. Obviously, I had to let the Fist know about you."

She turned her head to look at me. "I'm sorry," she said softly, putting her warm hand on my thigh. I pulled away.

"What do they want with me? Why go to all this trouble?" I asked.

"I don't know, Anthony. Do you really think that they tell me anything? To be honest, I think it's just that psycho Sato getting her sadistic jollies. You're right about Room 497 though. That's where the solution is. I've thought about it a lot. But nothing makes sense."

"You can say that again," I said sarcastically.

"Do you know what the most ironic thing is?" she said, her voice trembling. More tears were coming to her green eyes. " My father died a week after I arrived in Japan. It was all for nothing. Nothing." Her head fell and she shook with the force of her tears.

I stood and watched her, feeling angry and cold. She recovered a bit and looked up at me. "I fell in love with you," she said. "Even as we were changing you into Jane Masters, as you became this smooth, unmasculine thing, I used to fantasise about us together. I fell in love with the man inside the woman. Anthony, I-"

"Shut up. Don't. Don't do this. It's not right." I didn't know what I felt now. Suddenly I realised I was crying. I raised my gun.

She looked up again. "Are you going to kill me?" she said in a very quiet voice. "I-I don't want to die. But it would be the right thing. I know. Are you going to kill me?" she repeated.

My hand was shaking. "Everyone dies today," I said softly. "But not yet."

***

to be continued