Lips of an Angel

"Yeah, I have a hypothesis about that," Sharpe said, scrolling up through the notes on her laptop. "I think she's being partially affected by the hormone cocktail as well. Not fully, I suspect she's got some resistance because they're hormones that she's actually producing, but I think she has trouble keeping her neuro-peptides in a stable balance." She stopped dead for a moment. "Plus she's got to be dehydrated as hell. Um...so anyway, she has trouble thinking straight when she's horny, and she's pumping out enough of this shit that she's almost always horny."

WildRose nodded. "She did seem to suddenly be a different person when she came."

"Sexual satiety," Sharpe said, adding a few chemical symbols to that section of the notes. "Probably the only thing that even temporarily stabilizes the hormone balance in her brain. That's good. You can use that against her."

"Wait, what, me?" WildRose raised her eyebrows in surprise. "You really want me to go back after her? I figured you were going to go find one of your robot buddies online to swoop in and take her down."

Sharpe shook her head. "Nah. First," she said, holding up a finger, "the nearest reliable robot superhero who isn't so massively overdesigned as to have a neural network susceptible to hormone control-and this is not the time to get me started on a rant about 'wetware', do not get me started on another goddamn rant about 'wetware'-is in Cleveland. Even if they didn't have anything going and could drop everything to help us, they wouldn't get here until tomorrow."

She held up a second finger. "That's bad because second, does anyone in this room really think it's a coincidence that the woman who's suddenly a walking biochemical dirty bomb...um, no pun intended...for the brainwashing set is breaking into a genetics company looking for industrial secrets? She stumbled onto something, it changed her into this, and now she's trying to find a way to fix herself. Meaning something is rotten in the state of Genefit, and we need to treat this as a race against time. Because probably they're after Angel the same way she's after them. They can't afford to have walking evidence that they're working on this shit."

She held up a third finger. "And third...this is our city, and we don't goddamn well go running for help whenever shit gets hairy, got it? I don't care who the bad guy thinks they are, we're WildRose and Sharpe and we don't need help from anyone."

She paused, blushing. "...not unless it involves an army of killer robots, or something. I mean, we're not stupid."

"So what's the plan?" WildRose asked. "Because we've already established that I have no defense against this stuff. Pep-talks aside, we need an actual plan here."

Sharpe reached into the bag next to the portable lab and pulled out what looked like a SCUBA mask. "Portable bio-hazard gear," she said. "For when you absolutely positively have to analyze the weird toxin that killed the last person who tried to analyze it. The filters on this will block her pussy mojo just fine. You go get some sleep, then you catch up with her at her next destination-I've marked it out, she's moving in a very predictable pattern, probably because she's not thinking clearly-and take her down while she's too horny to function effectively. Then you get her locked down in a safehouse out of the way."

Sharpe began packing up the lab gear. "Meanwhile, I'll go back to my panic room and dig into Genefit and Project Astarte. I should be able to make their computers sit up and beg right around the same time you're putting the Dirty Angel down for the count. Sounds good?"

WildRose smiled. "Yeah. Sounds good."

"Excellent." Sharpe pulled her in for a long, deep kiss. "First, though...I think we have some make-up sex to get to."

*****

Of course, the plan went right the fuck to hell within the first thirty seconds.

WildRose arrived at the Genefit Industrial Park on Talos Avenue right on time, just around the point that the employees were going home for the day. She was expecting to have to slip past a few security guards and some white-collar schlubs who had a deadline to get to, the same kind of people who didn't even know she was in the building yesterday.

Instead, a dozen heavily armed five-man squads patrolled the building on a regular schedule, each one wired into a communications network allowing them to summon backup to their location within seconds. They all had bio-hazard filters over their faces that suggested they'd already been briefed on their target and her capabilities. And judging by the way they behaved when they saw WildRose, they were operating on black ops protocols of 'shoot first, poke bodies with gun muzzles later'.

Not that they were enough to stop her. Sharpe squelched their comlinks, and WildRose took out any groups that were between her and the R&D labs. They were at a disadvantage, after all-they had to worry about hitting each other, while she could choose her spot and wade in without having to care about collateral damage. Of any kind. (Besides, that guy probably wanted a new monitor anyway. Who still used CRT in this day and age?)

But it took time, and WildRose had the sick feeling in her gut as she loped down the hallway leading to the labs that one way or another, she was running out of it fast. The building was buzzing like a hornet's nest with mercenaries who knew that someone had gotten in, even if they didn't know who or where, and that meant that Dirty Angel was in far more danger than she realized. If she thought she was just hitting a normal building, and they got to her-

WildRose stopped dead. Or that. That could also happen.

The R&D labs were a scene of chaos. Bullet holes riddled the walls, several small fires had broken out where gunfire had hit something flammable or volatile, and four mercenaries lay sprawled in various positions that suggested that WildRose wasn't the only one able to handle herself in a fight. And the fifth...he was lying on the floor, his gas mask missing. The Dirty Angel was straddling his hips, pumping up and down as her moans turned to screams that WildRose found unnervingly familiar.

She made a wild sprint at the two of them, but Angel must have already gotten her rocks off because she rolled off of her semi-conscious partner with astonishing agility to come up into a fighting stance. "I really should have told you to stay away," she said, a note of regret in her voice. "This isn't your fight."

"Wouldn't have worked," WildRose said, enunciating the words with extra care so they could be heard through the filtration mask. "I'm not the type to run from a fight, and your sex fog bullshit wore off a while ago." More quietly, she said to Sharpe, "We need a Plan B, ASAP. She's already taken care of her distractions and she's smart enough to go for the mask. I don't think I can reason with her because, well, you know me. Any ideas?"

Sharpe's voice came through the ear mike, sounding calm and confident. "Working on Plan BSAP now. Give me half a moment, I'm into Genefit's corporate database and looking for goodies. Have you at least made the token attempt at reasoning with her yet?"

"Trying it now," WildRose said quietly. Louder, she said, "Look, we figured out what Genefit did to you. We want to help you. But-"

Angel quirked an eyebrow in confusion. "Who's we?"

"My partner Sharpe and I." WildRose froze in shock as she heard the words escape her lips. Why the hell had she said that? Jesus, she'd taken a bullet from Exhume rather than admit to Sharpe's existence, and now she was just volunteering the information?

Sharpe noticed too. "Rose, that didn't sound like you. Can you check the seals on that mask for me? If she gets the idea that I know something, she might decide that it's easier to enslave us both and make us do her dirty work...again, pun not intended goddamnit."

WildRose made a quick pat of the mask. Nothing seemed out of place, but... "Oh, is that what you're worried about?" Angel asked, a look of calculated innocence on your face. "You're worried that you're breathing me in and it's making your mind all fuzzy...and foggy...and blissfully eager to please?" She chuckled. WildRose didn't like the sound of that laugh. Either they were wrong about her being an innocent victim of circumstance, or she was starting to enjoy this a little too much.

"Because you said that it wore off," Angel continued, coming closer and closer with a slinky sway of her hips in each step. "And if it wore off, and you've got that gas mask on, well then. There's nothing you need to worry about. You're not in my power at all. But if that's the case, well...why did you answer my question so freely? Why are you just standing there and watching me? And the big question...what would you do if I asked you to take that mask off?"

WildRose heard Sharpe in her ear, but her whole body seemed to be paralyzed with indecision. She could feel something tugging at the back of her mind like the ghost of a feeling that she only remembered forgetting. A sweet, submissive pull on her mind, whispering that it felt so nice to listen and trust and please...next to that, Sharpe's words seemed distant and meaningless. She was shouting something dull and pointless like, "Abort, Rose, Plan BSAP is abort. Get the hell out of there, I was wrong, you're already compromised. Get out before she asks you to-"

And then Angel spoke, drowning out everything else in her head. "Could you please take that mask off? Then we can talk a little better."

WildRose took the mask off.

It didn't feel like she was going fuzzy at all. It felt like the world was coming back into focus, and the center of that focus was Angel. She was so beautiful, so sweet and sensuous, and WildRose took breath after deep, heady breath of her scent and smiled wide as it filled her lungs. Her eyes seemed to drift easily and naturally to the source of the aroma, that smooth and slick and shining pussy that looked so perfect when it was exposed like that. WildRose felt like she wanted to stare at it forever.

Angel came closer still, so close that they were almost touching. WildRose ached to move those last few inches, but she understood that her purpose was to please and not pleasure right now. "There," Angel asked, her voice more musical than ever, "that's better. We can talk a little more openly, can't we?" WildRose nodded blankly. "Now can you tell me more about Sharpe? You said you and her knew something about Genefit. What have you learned?"

"Hang on," WildRose said, pulling out her earpiece and dropping it to the floor. She stepped on it hard, crushing it to pieces. "There. Now she can't hear us." She beamed at her own cleverness. "She's a computer hacker, she's working on hacking into Genefit to find out what they did to you so that she can reverse it. She's very smart, too. She suggested that you should command me to take her to her secret hideout so that you can enslave her, and then we can both help you find a way to fix this while you stay safe so Genefit can't hurt you."

"That is clever!" Angel said, a smile breaking out on her own face. "I'll be honest-even though my change does have some...advantages..." She giggled, tapping WildRose's nose with a slightly wrinkled finger. "I don't want to stay like this. Let's go with Miss Sharpe's very clever plan, shall we? Do you know where her 'secret hideout' is?"

"Uh-huh!" WildRose exclaimed with childlike enthusiasm. The day Sharpe had trusted her enough to take her back to Sharpe's actual home, rather than meeting at the dojo or any one of a dozen safehouses, was one of the most prized memories of their whole relationship. But now it just seemed like the perfect opportunity to please Angel. WildRose knew Sharpe would be angry at first, of course. But once she got the chance to taste Angel's pussy, WildRose was certain she would understand.

They made it out of the building with only one or two more fights-Angel made WildRose stay put while she did the fighting, which kind of annoyed WildRose until she felt the room lurch a little and remembered just how drunk on pussy she really was. Then WildRose took Angel back to her car and they headed out towards the suburbs. Angel drove, WildRose navigated. "After all, sweetie," Angel said, "I really shouldn't let you drive in your current condition."

They pulled up to a modest bungalow in a sea of similar suburban houses, and WildRose led the way. "Sharpe's got all sorts of clever defenses," she whispered conspiratorially. "But she taught me how to disable them all." She reached out and tripped a hidden switch, then tapped in a code on a concealed keypad. She opened the door and reached around before opening it to tap a button that was just out of view. Then she led Angel into the house itself.

"Come on," WildRose whispered giddily. "The panic room is in the basement. That way you can't see it from the outside." She knew that Sharpe must know they were coming by now, she had cameras everywhere, but she also knew that Sharpe wouldn't run. Sharpe wouldn't abandon her as long as she thought there was a chance of fixing things, and that was just what WildRose was going to use to bring her into Angel's service. Maybe they could just fix Angel enough so that she only enslaved them, and then they could be hers forever. That sounded so nice that WildRose couldn't help rubbing herself through her costume as they approached.

"Here we are," WildRose said, "Sharpe's secret hideout. Knock knock!" She laughed, the dizzy feeling momentarily overwhelming her, before shifting aside a disused Soloflex machine and typing in a twenty-digit code that had taken her several days to memorize into the keypad concealed beneath it. The door slid open, and the two women went inside.

The door slid shut behind them again after they went through, which WildRose thought was just perfect because it meant that the room would fill up even quicker with Angel's sexy fog. "Please don't be mad, honey," she said as she approached the chair where Sharpe sat with her back to them, watching their approach on a bank of monitors. "I did this for you. Being obedient feels so nice that I just had to let you experience it. We're going to help her get fixed up, and beat Genefit, and then we're going to be her pussyslaves for the rest of our lives and-"

She spun the chair around. There was a mannequin sitting in it. A note pinned to its chest said, "SORRY."

"What the fuck-" was all WildRose had time to get out before the mannequin's head exploded into a thick, choking gas and she lost consciousness.

*****

When she woke, it was in a hospital that went beyond ultra-modern into some sort of uber-hyper-mega-ultimate modern. Everything was white and gleaming, even the bedpans. Sharpe was sitting next to her, looking concerned but not anxious. When she saw WildRose's eyes open, she said, "You owe me a house, honey."

WildRose frowned in confusion. "Where am I? How long was I out?" she said through a throat that sounded thick and gunky.

"You're at the Frontier Foundation. And not long, about three days," Sharpe said. "Doctor Frontier had to run you through some really cool blood-washing machines to get all the funky neuro-peptides out of your system so that you didn't just snap back to Sex Kitten mode as soon as you woke up. You had to be unconscious so they could do stuff to your brain without your brain getting in the way. It's all the kind of boring and technical stuff that usually makes you want to hit people, so I'll spare you the details."

"And...her?" WildRose didn't trust herself to say the name without swearing. "What happened to us? I remember a big doll..."

"Oh, that!" Sharpe grinned the extra-smug grin of a genius about to explain their own cleverness. "While you were taking that shower of yours, I did run that analysis I told you about. But I also realized that Angel's hormones had bonded to the receptor sites in your brain, which meant that you'd probably have trouble resisting her even if you could avoid getting a fresh dose. You were absolutely useless as an effective crimefighter, so I decided to go with the real Plan B. I fed you information that I knew you would cheerfully volunteer to the Dirty Angel as soon as she got her hooks in you again, and that led her into a trap. Her and you, sorry. Well, mostly sorry."

WildRose sighed in defeat. "Nah, I'd have screwed me over the exact same way if I was you. At least we got her." She paused as sudden panic hit her. "We did get her, right?"

"Yep!" Sharpe said brightly. "She's in an isolation ward having her genes rekinked-turned out Project Astarte was some sort of fucked up utopian biowarfare project, the kind of thing that killed free will but left people standing. Angel was investigating, she got dosed with one of their mutagens, and the rest is history. Specifically, the rest is history that is now open-sourced to the Internet tanking Genefit's stock prices while they undergo a full federal inquiry into their business practices, but that's why you leave the devious sinister corporations to people like me."

"Oh God," WildRose said, putting her head into her hands. "You are going to be smug about this for weeks."

"Damn straight I am," Sharpe said. "I saved the day, beat the bad guys, and rescued you from a fate that was...okay, substantially better than death but still not what you really wanted. You're lucky to have me."

WildRose sat up, despite the protests of her stiff muscles, and planted a kiss on her lover's mouth. "Don't I know it," she said as she came up for air. "I really am sorry I let her get to me again."

"I already told you, you're forgiven," Sharpe replied. "Which isn't to say that there's not room enough in that hospital bed for a little more make-up sex."

"I thought you'd never ask," WildRose said, pulling back the sheets and doffing her gown. If she wanted to get back to her fighting prime after three days of inactivity, she needed to do a little physical therapy first.

THE END