Chapter 11
On her knees, a tightly-hooded Sue looked up at her hands chained over her head. They were tightly cuffed with those wide dark bands welded to a steel bar suspended from cables in the ceiling. Without her powers, she wasn’t going anywhere. Her attention was drawn back by the patronizing tone of Dante standing next to a small chrome cart.
“As you should have already guessed, each of the garments laid out on this table is custom made for you, Subject Sue.”
“For me? You needn’t have bothered.”
“No bother. I enjoy my tradecraft. The Humiliation Hood you’re wearing I’ve familiarized you with just now. The choke collar, well, you’ve already felt its bite, shall we say. You will learn it has the ability to control your jaw.”
Sue’s lips tighten upon hearing this, a subconscious clenching reaction she barely realizes she’s performing.
“The ear buds you’ll find quite effective, too. I’ve developed a customized program of audio persuasion therapy and tonal training. You will receive behavior indoctrination tracks through your ear buds randomly at all hours while in my possession. There will also be tonal cues to alert you when to act out specific behaviors that I will train you to perform.
“I’m not some Pavlovian dog for your amusement, Allamordo,” Sue barks.
Smiling coldly, Dante answers, “Sadly, that is true. A dog’s learning curve is much better than most humans, except for the most submissive of homo sapiens.”
Sue frowns while Dante continues on. “Next we have the Iron Corset,” he says with a sweep of his hand at a black leather harness complete with chrome nipple clips and black rawhide laces. “Obviously it’s not iron but actually butter soft leather. However, when you wear this,” Dante say, lifting the garment and showing it off for Sue’s leery benefit, “the name will clarify itself in your mind and body, I assure you. Its negative reinforcement aptitude has often concluded my training procedures with other subjects.”
“Did you come by your sadism on your mother’s side or your father’s?”
“I’d say they were both a bit bent,” Dante asserts before adding, "but they were both brilliant and passed that on to me in spades.”
“How wonderful for you.”
“You’re getting away with your sarcasm and jibes only because I want you focused on the procedures you will experience. Once I’ve explained all these garments and their uses, I assure you that your fun and games will stop…and mine will begin.”
“I better get my licks in now then,” Sue growls softly.
“Oh you will be doing plenty of licking along the way, Subject.”
This shuts up Sue completely for the moment.
“These are Punishment Panties. You’ll have noticed they’re equipped with both vaginal and anal dildoes. Each is separately controlled remotely and offer a variety and range of both vibratory and electric stimulation from highly pleasurable to extremely painful. Which of those settings and ranges you will experience will be entirely up to you! The good girl gets the good vibrations and the bad girl gets the painful shocks.”
“If they’re capable of providing pleasure, why are they called Punishment Panties?” Sue’s eyes look into Dante’s with a foreknowledge of his reply but reads them anyway.
“Almost all subjects to date only alter their deepest behavioral tendencies using the negative mode. Maybe you can be the exception that proves the rule, Subject Sue. That might be worth a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
“As if you’d ever submit a paper to them.”
“Yes, they do tend to be a bit elitist in their choice of topics. Finally, these are your Compliance Boots. I took the liberty of measuring your foot size from calibrated video images of you in action from past adventures. And confirmed that size from your blue leather pumps collected at the time of your capture. I’m pleased to say I was right at size 7, yes?”
“Yes, 7,” Sue nods. “But let me guess, they can also go to size 5 via remote. Or worse.”
“Again, your intelligence sparks my imagination.”
“I find that regrettable,” Sue answers. And, with the presentation over now, Dante imposes his strict code of conduct upon Sue with a vengeance. The choke band on her hood constricts sharply, drawing a gasping inhalation that sounds like a tire squealing to a stop on hot pavement.
“No more wisecracks, Subject Sue. Nod your head if you understand.”
Her eyes roam inside the hood openings like some wild horse as Sue tries to keep herself from nodding. She can only last 15 seconds as the band inches tighter and tighter. Yet again the tongue languishes out of the zippered mouth hole and a humbled Sue Richards nods her head in terrified compliance. The choking band releases as Dante steps up to the abject figure and palms her right breast, already taking the training along the pathway he’s laid out for this attractive subject.
“You will learn very quickly that all my garments here will lead you rapidly along the pathway of behavioral modification I have laid out for you, Subject Sue. It is inevitable. You will, of course, have complete free will as to how rapid that learning is achieved. That’s what’s so wonderful about my procedures.”
Free will? In a pig’s eye!
That thought though she chose not to express out loud.
“Hi Sue, it’s Reed again. Sorry we seem to be two ships in the night. Miss you. I hope you’re thinking of me in sexy ways. I know I’m thinking of you like that. Can’t wait to get back home to … uhm… see you in the flesh.”
Reed took a breath and a drink of the ice water he’d brought back to his room.
“Anyway, good news here. The case may be breaking. Without going into detail on an unsecured line, let’s just say we’ve gotten a break on that thing we’re working on. We could be home before next Christmas. Ha, ha, that’s a joke. Might just be three or four days before I’m there with you in my arms. That’s my hope and dream anyway.
“So, call me back, let me know all is well, it’s been 14 hours since my last call. You’re not seeing another man, are you? Ha, ha, another bad joke. Love you sweetie, thanks for putting up with me. Call. Bye.”
Reed hung up the phone and sighed. It wasn’t like Sue not to return a call, but he wasn’t going to get annoyed or upset. It could be just bad timing between them with the distance and opposite sleep cycles due to the time difference. He’d give her another day before he got worried.
Sue was definitely seeing another man … at his very worst. Over the course of three hours, the female member of the Fantastic Four was put through her own customized version of hell. Dante Allamordo was up in her face with either a scowl, a smirk, or, more often than not, the chilling stare of a scientist assessing biological data from a petri dish.
At other times he would replace the eye-hole inserts and the blinded Sue had to respond to exasperatingly whispered verbal commands through earbuds with the volume lowered so she could barely make them out. And if she was a moment too long in responding she paid a painful penalty.
Any resistance or hesitation was met with a harsh punishment of the collar clamping down on her throat or a painfully shrieking 10-second audio siren fed into her brain from her ear buds. At other times, Sue was inundated with audio messages like “Behave or suffer”; “Try harder, bitch!”; “You’re not so special” and “Finally, a woman who listens!” That one really annoyed her. For three hours Sue was given no positive rewards for performing her training tasks...only the negative reinforcement. That too was getting under her skin.
Listlessly slumped on her knees, her hands clamped to the overhead bar and all her powers negated by the gamma ray receiving chip securely sewn onto the top of her training hood, Subject Sue, as Dante repeatedly referred to her, was forced to obey basic commands a dog would find boring and annoying. She was trained to stay in position and not move a muscle, tilt her head one way or another and open her mouth to the command “Drop jaw.” Every time there was a simple audio tone to precede the spoken command.
Sue tried every now and then to exert her powers only to be met with futility and despair. The hood had stolen everything away from her. And Dante was pounding away at her willpower and her hope with a relentlessness that left the blonde beauty quiet, angry and, mournfully obedient. Invisible Woman hadn’t been reduced to such a morose sense of despair since… well, ever. She wouldn’t cry though. Tears of pain, sure, there was nothing she could do about those, but not a drop of self-pity fell. She would obey and wait for any opening, any chance.