Chapter 10
Sue Richards awoke in the darkness with a start. Surrounded by an inky blackness so deep, her mind grasped desperately at reason and familiarity.
Power blackout in the Baxter building? Covered by my blankets? Caught in the vacuum of space behind the dark side of some moon?
And then reality set in and memory returned.
Captured!
She shook her head and realized then that it was covered completely. She was fitted with a warm leathery wraparound hood that stifled her breathing, covered her eyes and constricted her all the way down to a band around her windpipe. She felt the metal teeth of a zipper against her lips and her ears were plugged with invasive buds that muffled all sound. Only pinprick holes allowed her the luxury of breathing through nostrils that gaped and twitched for refreshing oxygen.
Sue willed herself not to panic and that wasn’t easy. She was kneeling with her arms fixed above her head to something unresisting. She could feel the wide cuffs tight around her wrists and there was no play in their attachment above. Her torso was covered by soft material, warm and constraining. Long sleeved. Her legs, too, seemed clad in the same material, tight around her thighs and calves, even to her covered toes which she flexed. No shoes.
Where am I?
Hoping against hope. Sue gathered herself and tried to summon the tiniest invisible forcefield ball in her sweaty right palm. She gritted her teeth and willed a familiar glowing silvery globe into existence. She waited, hesitant and yearning for that faint tingling sparkle to well out of her palm. She concentrated more, needing the skin to bloom with a tickle that indicated she had power. It didn’t come. It wouldn’t come. She sighed softly, bore down and tried again. And yet again. There was nothing. Her powers just weren’t there.
She didn’t feel woozy or drugged or confused or tired. She just felt the absence of a strength she’d known for years, had assumed would always be a part of her. Now that strength was gone and she didn’t know when it might return, if ever. This cloying hood annoyed her and she gasped with frustration and then shut that emotion down.
Have to stay strong. My mind is my best asset. Keep calm, Sue. Stay in control.
There was a muffled noise to her right and Sue’s head stilled immediately and angled in that direction. The total blackness soothed to a deep gray. A light had been turned on near her.
“Wlcm bk, Sbjt Suh. Yuhwuh oud fr qut a whyl…”
“Whutt?!”
“Oh, the audio feed. Foolish me, I forgot to initiate the ear buds.” The voice of Dante Allamordo, vaguely familiar from Sue’s time with Madame Minh chimed in her ears loud and clear now. She had been in a fog from an orgasm when she’d first heard his voice. She remembered little of his conversation with Minh except for him saying something about his penis in Sue’s throat. She tensed up at the voice but listened intently to his words, his inflections for every scrap of information she could gather.
“I said, ‘Welcome back, Subject Sue. You were out for quite a while.’ Oh, here, let me get this zipper open so we can communicate. Pull back your lips or they might get chafed.”
Sue did so and the zipper teeth were slowly pulled apart, letting in a refreshing flow of air. Sue drank it greedily, wetting her slightly dried lips in the process.
“Subject Sue?” Her voice was dry, unused for so long. It was still harsh from the screams of pleasure from hours ago.
“Why yes, that is how I will address you during our training sessions. You may call me Owner or sir. Either is fine.”
“Let me go.”
Dante reared back and roared with laughter. A long spasm of hilarity that shook his frame. It took him a quarter of a minute for him to settle down.
“That was worth half my fee right there. I haven’t had that good a laugh in over a year or more. Let you go? Subject Sue, we’ve not yet begun to play!”
“What do you want?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Immediate obedience on command.”
“As if.” Sue scoffed.
“Let me be clear, Subject. My name is Dante Allamordo. I have been contracted by Madame Minh to attain this behavior from you for a princely amount that I will not forego. Therefore, you will give me immediate obedience on command. Not just me, but Madame Minh and anybody she stipulates as your controller. There is no room for negotiation. The sooner you understand that truth of things, the better for you.”
“Why don’t I have my powers?”
“Because I don’t want you to have them until I control them through you.”
“You’re turning me into a tool of some kind.”
“Good, I prefer intelligent subjects. It makes the training more interesting for me.”
“This Minh wants my powers for her own gain.”
“Such a keen mind. These will be wonderful training sessions for me. The vast sums of money are gravy.”
“I may not be so easy to train.”
“That’s the first dumb thing you’ve said.”
“My resistance will surprise you.”
“That’s pure fantasy on your part. I am an expert in my field of behavior modification. Pain and pleasure will be your existence for your foreseeable future. They are nature’s most powerful motivators. I will prevail. You will not.”
“I have friends.”
“None nearby. Therefore, that’s irrelevant to our situation. I suppose when I’m done and if Minh decides to release you, they might be a comfort to you after the fact. Do text me in a week or so and let me know if curling up in a fetal ball and weeping in their arms helps. But for now, I think we should continue the training.”
“Have we already begun?” Sue was taken slightly aback by this.
“Yes, certainly,” Dante replied. “You pulled back your lips before I opened the zipper. You’ve already earned a point. Get enough of them and the reward will be generous.”
Sue’s frown was obvious through the zipper. With the eyeholes still covered, she couldn’t see Allamordo’s nod of satisfaction.
“As you know, our target is on the fifth floor of the museum,” Minh pointed at the blueprints. “There are motion detectors and protective laser beams in position throughout the floor, especially this room…501.” She tapped the drawing lightly. “Those alarms are linked into the security room here in the basement where the tv feeds are monitored.”
“Lasers? Seriously?” Rick’s eyebrows shot up.
The elder man, Guilford, handled this. “Not the ball-searing kind, numb-nuts. The break-the-beam-alert-the-rent-a-cops kind.”
“I knew that,” Rick Tillman murmured.
“Guys. Focus! Should anybody trip one of those detectors we’ll still have some time before any guard reinforcements will arrive. Two minutes minimum based on their Sunday night crew levels. That’s providing we’ve already dealt with the two guards on that floor prior to any possible alarms going off. And even if they do arrive, we have our girl to help us out.”
“Invisible Woman. At our beck and call,” Rick supplies with a grin.
“Indeed, our ace in the hole,” Madame Minh nods. “That’s providing Dante does his part, of course. If he does, this job should be a cinch. Now, let’s go over the individual steps once more. With her or not, this all has to move like clockwork.”
Dante Allamordo looked at the hood he’d dragged over the head of his subject. The tiny silver rectangle attached to its top was a protective box; inside a chip receiver. He beamed at his invention, the reason why he was confident he could control the powers of his test subject before him.
Hidden inside the ceiling, within a protective black glass globe was a powerful gamma ray disrupter, a dampening unit essentially that would block the gamma ray emanations of any item or being in the vicinity. Blocking the gamma rays that powered Invisible Woman’s abilities was the key to his plan. This unit transmitted the disruptive radiation from the broadcast unit to the receiver attached to the hood Sue was now wearing. In addition, there were three other training garments with receivers of their own. These garments of Dante’s design would be the cause of his subject’s ultimate subjugation. He had little doubt of his success.
“I know the hood is uncomfortable, Subject Sue, but it’s necessary in order to…”
“Oh, it’s quite comfy, thanks,” Sue interrupted.
“See, that there, what you just did, that was bad behavior to interrupt the owner. Bad!”
Pressing a remote button in his hand, Dante watched as Subject Sue’s face went red and she squawked loudly as soon as the hood’s band around her windpipe retracted severely. Her body jerked and twisted in outright terror as her airway was shutoff completely.
“This is an excellent teachable moment. You learn to restrict your disrespectful comments by negative reinforcement. See how it works?”
Sue’s body continued to jerk and her tongue dropped out from the zipper hole. Her gacking pleas were strident.
“Yes, I see that you do see.” Dante pushed the remote button once more and the hood’s collar band expanded to its original setting. Sue’s wheeze went on for half a minute before Dante spoke once again. “As I said, the hood is uncomfortable for a purpose. I meant the closeness and the leather and the retained heat and sweat. Now you have learned there’s also a restriction collar. And how effective it is! What fine progress we’re making, eh?”
Sue merely hung there, blind in her hood, wheezing on her knees, her breasts heaving, trying to gather herself for whatever was next. Without warning, a hand pulled at her hood, stripping off first her right eye cover and then her left to the rending sound of Velcro releasing. Squinting badly and turning her head, Sue looked down at her shoulder at the slick forest green sportswear top she was wearing. The color was soothing to her eyes and soon she lifted them to look directly into Dante’s eyes. They had all the warmth of a python’s.
“Let me show you the rest of your training gear. It’s all designed to help you learn quickly. I just know they’ll be efficient. We’ll have you kowtowing in no time.”
Sue kept her mouth shut. As trained.