Continuing the story begun in “The Making of a Mole”


The secretary put down the phone receiver. She looked up over the high receptionist counter at the lone woman sitting on the couch.

“Ms. Strickland will see you now,” she said.

Jenna Jones voiced her thanks, then rose and walked to the large double doors. She paused outside of them to straighten her suit jacket and brush some fuzz from her skirt. Then she pushed open the doors and walked through them.

Once inside the enormous office suite, she stepped out of her shoes and placed them in a cubby against the wall. Then she closed the door behind her, turned, and walked barefoot over the plush carpet towards the large, ornate desk situated in the back part of the room.

When she arrived at the desk, she stood there, silently waiting to be acknowledged. After several seconds, the woman behind the desk looked up from her work and nodded. With a smile, Jenna extended her hand.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Ms. Strickland,” she said.

“Sit down, Jenna,” Severna said, glaring at her employee the way one would at an unfunny comedian.

Jenna’s smile faded. She lowered her hand, then sat down in a chair before the desk.

“Have you completed your assignment?” Severna asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jenna said. “Everything is in order. The files now reside on the indicated server, and the DA’s office no longer has access to them.”

“Good. Is there anything else?”

“No, ma’am.”

“All right. I’ll contact you again when I have another job for you. For now, you’re free to go.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

Standing up, Jenna smiled and offered her hand to Severna once more. This time, Severna did not glare at the gesture. Instead, a look of concern crossed her face.

“Jenna, lower your hand.”

“Ma’am?”

“Lower your hand.”

“Yes, ma’am. Is anything wrong?”

“We will determine that presently.”

Severna opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pair of fitted leather gloves. She put them on, then stood and walked around the desk to face Jenna.

“So you want to shake my hand?” Severna asked. “Fine, shake it.

She reached up and took Jenna’s proffered hand. They shook for a moment, and then released each other. Jenna smiled at the exchanged pleasantry.

Severna looked down at her gloved hand. An oily sheen coated the palm, where Jenna’s fingers had touched it. She nodded knowingly, and then took hold of her employee’s wrist with her other hand.

“Come with me, Jenna.”

Without waiting for a response, Severna walked to a back corner of the room, pulling Jenna along with her.

“Ms. Strickland?” Jenna asked. “What’s wrong?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, ma’am, I have no idea.”

They reached the corner, and Severna turned to again face Jenna.

“Hm. Yes, I believe you don’t actually know what’s wrong,” Severna said.

“Thank you, ma’am. I truly don’t.”

“That isn’t necessary a good thing.”

“It’s not?”

“No. Because that means you’re not acting of your own free will.”

“Ma’am?”

Severna held up her glove with the sheen on it. Jenna stared at it in confusion.

“What is that?” Jenna asked.

“That is either a drug,” Severna said. “Or, in a worse case scenario, poison. Either way, it came from you.”

“No! No, I would never…!”

Taking hold of Jenna’s other wrist, Severna showed the woman her own hand. Traces of a light oil glistened on her fingertips.

“You would, and you did,” Severna said. “But, I don’t believe you knew what you were doing. I think that someone got to you between the time I gave you your assignment and when you completed it.”

“Got to me?”

“Yes, got to you. Corrupted you. Brainwashed you. I believe my enemies are finally getting smarter. Not smart enough, mind you, but smarter than they were.”

“Brainwashed? No...I mean, how? When?”

“Don’t fret, Jenna. I don’t blame you. And I can fix this. I can make it all right.”

“You can?” Jenna asked, her tone and expression hopeful but scared.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“By brainwashing you.”

“You mean deprogramming me?”

“Of course not,” Severna said, tightening her grip on Jenna’s wrist. “If you’ve already been compromised, what’s the point in deprogramming you? My best bet is to brainwash you more thoroughly than they did. By doing so, I can ensure your unfaltering obedience and loyalty, while immunizing you against any further attempts to control your mind by anyone other than me.”

“No, Ms. Strickland, please, I--”

“Quiet.”

The command, though spoken softly carried all of Severna’s considerable force of will behind it. Though not yet brainwashed into compliance by her employer, Jenna nonetheless followed the directive without hesitation. She closed her mouth over the unfinished plea and stood absolutely still.

Severna released Jenna’s wrists, then reached into a pocket to pull out her phone. She tapped several keystrokes into the device. A moment later, a panel in the wall behind her slid noiselessly open. In the newly revealed space, Jenna saw a large alcove, in which was placed a unique-looking chair.

“Sit,” Severna said, with a nod over her shoulder to the chair.

Jenna briefly opened her mouth to question or protest. But when she met the withering stare leveled at her, she swallowed hard and moved to do as she was told.

Once Jenna was seated, Severna tapped another command into the phone. In response, several hidden restraints shot forth and snapped shut over Jenna’s wrists, ankles, and torso.

“This is a shame, really,” Severna said, with a hint of actual sympathetic compassion in her voice. “You are a smart girl, whose best asset is her creative thinking. It’s why I never subjected you to my control before. But now, I either lose you entirely to whoever got to you, or I do this and salvage what I can of your talents. We’ll just have to see how this goes. Unfortunately, a level one rinse or a level two soak isn’t enough to break mental conditioning. We’ll start with a level three wash and hope that’s enough. At least that way, your skills and memories will remain intact. But if that doesn’t work, we’ll have to amp it up to a level four scour. That would erase almost everything that makes you you, but it would certainly break any hold someone has on you.”

Jenna’s eyes went wide, and her fear finally overrode her loyalty.

“Please, Ms. Strickland! Please don’t do this! There has to be another way!”

“Another way? Yes, if I want to spend the time and effort to deprogram you with hypnotherapy and counseling, I can probably break their control over you. But neither the time, nor effort is worth it when I have a much faster, more effective, and more convenient solution at hand. And speaking of time, I’ve wasted enough as it is. We’ll begin now and see how well a level three wash works.”

Ignoring Jenna’s continued protests, Severna entered the initiation codes into her phone. As a loud, mechanical hum rose up, a panel in the low ceiling over the chair opened. From it emerged a helmet-like object that slowly descended on an articulated rod.

Jenna screamed in abject terror as the helmet finished its descent and came to rest over the top of her head. Immediately, several lights on the helmet’s exterior began blinking in rapid succession. The mechanical hum faded and was replaced with rhythmic buzzing noise.

Beneath the helmet, Jenna gasped. She began to first tremble and then outright shake. Her hands and feet strained against the bonds that held her in place. But as seconds passed, her physical reactions subsided. She let her hands and feet go limp, and her shaking diminished to occasional twitches. Her eyes began to blink, and soon each blink left them closed for longer and longer. Less than minute has passed when her eyes no longer opened. Then, her twitching all but stopped. A sleepy smile spread over her face, and she sighed as if content.

“Jenna,” Severna said. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“You will address me as Mistress. You will obey me, now and always.”

“I will obey you now and always, Mistress.”

“Good. Now, I want you to remember who captured you within the last couple of days. And I want you to tell me exactly what they did to you.”

“Yes, Mistress. I was captured by the superheroine, Lady Shrike. She took me to…”

In great detail, Jenna told Severna about her interrogation by Lady Shrike. She explained how even under fear of a brutal beating, she refused to cooperate with the fearsome heroine. Then, another heroine entered the scene: Krystal, whose powers enable her to hypnotize a person just by touch. By Krystal’s power, Jenna was thus rendered suggestible and compliant. While she was helplessly in their power, the heroines brainwashed her into carrying out their plot against Severna and then forgetting everything they had done to her. The plot entailed her meeting with Severna, using a powerful hypnotic drug on her boss, and then coercing the Empress of the City into surrendering to the authorities with a full confession of all crimes.

Severna digested the information stoically. The superheroines were indeed getting smarter. Many times, she had brainwashed them--either individually or in groups--into serving her needs or carrying out her schemes. But finally, they were learning to fight fire with fire. They had come close to succeeding, too. She needed to ensure they didn’t get a second chance.

Rousing herself from her reverie, she observed Jenna sitting in the chair under the helmet. She pictured both Lady Shrike (who she knew) and this new heroine, Krystal (who she didn’t know), sitting there, losing the struggle to maintain control over their own minds. She imagined them stripped of their boots, helplessly bound and barefoot, the helmet sucking away their will and brainwashing them into complete obedience and servitude to her.

To make that daydream a reality, Severna knew she needed a good plan. She would need to take a risk, and she would need to be smart--smarter, at least, than a couple of haughty heroines. Her mental gears began to turn. The plan formed and grew in her thoughts.

Beneath the helmet, Jenna continued smiling in her state of mindless bliss. Before her, Severna smiled in her state of coldly calculating malevolence.