The King's Creed Ch.01

"It's not an actual chastity belt," I said, "but it would be near impossible to get these off without your hands."

Sarah looked at the leather garment with undisguised horror. "Please ... Master ..."

I ignored her and slipped the little silver bullet back inside her messily wet and sticky snatch. She groaned as it sunk inside her still buzzing. I slipped her legs into the leather panties and pulled them up so that they sat over her crotch. Then I adjusted the little clips on the side, tightening them, so no amount of wiggling would allow her to get free. I made sure the leather gusset would hold the little bullet and then stood back to admire my handiwork.

Sarah lay against the wall moaning and bucking in abject helplessness and frustration.

I turned and went to my closet.

It was a strange sensation to go through the normal process of donning my suit and watch while listening to the stifled little squeaks of pleasure emanating from my slave girl in the corner.

With one last glance at my subjected redhead, I stepped out of the bedroom fully attired.

***

As soon as I left the room, that curious energy that had been hammering inside me drained away. I had to grab the banister for support as my vision swam and my legs wobbled.

Curious.

It took me ten seconds to gather myself, and then I made my way down the stairs.

I had given Carol the downstairs guest bedroom.

Carol was another woman with a chip in her head. She was about twenty-six, two years older than me. She had long brown hair and a cute face. She wasn't the goddess that Sarah had been turned into, but she did all right for herself . . . that is, until you got to know her.

She had been nothing but a nuisance for me since she took up residence.

I had come close to ordering her to behave herself, but I felt guilty using her absolute obedience to me in that way. I could easily become her oppressor if I wasn't careful. I could replace her father in that regard.

I knocked gently on her door.

"Carol?" I said.

"Yes?" she called out irritably from the confines of the guest room.

"Sarah is . . . um . . . restrained upstairs. If there's an emergency—like a fire or something—you'll need to help her."

I heard a snort on the other side of the door.

"Yeah, yeah . . . I'll let the little slave slut out if something happens," Carol said in a harsh voice.

I clenched my fists outside the door. I had the power to make her join the little slave slut on the ground with nothing more than a few words, but I wouldn't.

I took a deep breath and calmed myself.

"Thank you," I said politely and descended the rest of the stairs.

Breakfast was an orange and some instant coffee, and it would have to be eaten on the go. I opened the front door, closed it behind me, and treaded down the steps in front of my house. I got into my car door while balancing coffee and orange on my lap . . . and finally situated myself inside.

I steeled myself for the New York City traffic and pulled away from the curb.

Chapter 2

The elevator chimed, and the doors opened to reveal the FBI bullpen in all its glory. Cheap suits in chairs answered phone calls while holo machines buzzed and computers hummed.

I still didn't like the place.

With a purposeful stride, I managed to skirt most of the agents loitering around the coffee machine and sneak past Jones' office without his seeing me. I wasn't used to having to walk this far, but my old office door had a different nameplate decorating it.

That nameplate read Special Agent Karen Smith.

My new office was all the way across the bullpen, on the very opposite side of the elevator. Apparently, when you catch someone as nasty as Ronald Turner, the brass thinks that you might just be due a promotion. I was now something called a Supervisory Special Agent.

Promotion meant that I would now be doing no actual field work. It also meant an office the size of a cheap motel room rather than a broom closet.

I also got an assistant.

Rachel Lebrie was perhaps just a tad shy of being movie star pretty. She had blonde hair that curled into ringlets at the bottom and blue eyes that were as clear as a spring sky, and almost as innocent.

Needless to say, I was incredibly skeptical when she introduced herself as my new assistant. I was sure she was a stripper, that I was about to be embarrassed and aroused in an office filled with government employees.

But no, she was extremely professional. I had only worked with her one day before my vacation began. However, from what I could tell, she wore conservative clothing and was good at her job. It beat me what made a girl that pretty want to work for the government, but I didn't really consider it my business.

This morning she was sitting at her small desk outside my office in what could only be called a pantsuit. Her hair was slightly frazzled. I noticed two empty paper cups in her trash. If they were any indication, she had had one more cup of coffee than usual.

As I got closer, she spotted me. The relief on her face was almost unbearably visible.

"Mr. Creed, I'm so glad you're here," Rachel said as she stood to greet me. "I promised I wouldn't call you on your vacation if I didn't think it was important."

I brushed past her on my way into my office.

"I understand, Ms. Lebrie," I said, perhaps a tad colder than was warranted. For some reason, I always felt odd around Rachel. It went beyond my mere attraction to her.

"Tell me exactly what happened and exactly what you did," I said.

Rachel took a breath and let it all out.

"Well, Mr. Creed, I had just arrived when I heard your phone ring. I thought it was odd that the call didn't go through my extension, but I thought maybe it was a personal call and I didn't think anything about it. But the calling didn't stop, and it went on for five minutes. Finally, I thought it might be really important and that it was something you'd want to know about. I didn't feel comfortable answering your phone, so I got Agent Scott to do it."

She stopped and looked up at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

I shrugged.

"Go on," I said.

Rachel nodded. "Well, Agent Scott got really nervous when he realized it was the private line for informants, but he tried to answer anyway. The man on the phone heard it wasn't you and hung up. When Agent Scott tried to redial, the man told him to have you call him back and no one else."

Rachel suddenly looked up at me and studied me very closely. "He said something about you knowing 'the deal.'"

I nodded and sat down at my desk. It had to be Pietro. No one else had made such a deal with me. I picked up my phone.

"That will be all, Ms. Lebrie. You did the right thing."

Rachel nodded slightly and with one last curious look at me, departed.

The phone only had time to ring once before it was answered.

A gravelly voice croaked, "Agent Creed?"

"Yes, it's me, Pietro," I said. "I'm sorry I was so difficult to get a hold of."

"You sound like Creed, but still . . . what's our password?"

I snorted into the phone. Paranoia had its place, but Pietro had far too much of it.

"Fenway Park," I said tersely.

"Old or new?"

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose.

"Don't test me, Mr. Moretti."

A long chuckle crackled its way into the earpiece.

"Good, I was afraid I wasn't going to get to you in time. There is a very short window for this information."

I sat up straighter. "Wait, Pietro . . . is this the one?" I said slowly.

He gave a small, humorless chuckle. "I'm pretty sure this will be the one, Jon. The big one and the last one. Then it will be your turn to hold up your end of the deal."

I twirled a pen around my fingers.

Pietro Moretti and I made a deal five years ago.

Five years ago, Pietro was in one of the biggest cocaine smuggling operations New York had ever seen. He would have spent time in a government hotel until he had gray in his hair had he been convicted. That's where I came in.

Pietro wasn't the one to blow the whistle on the smuggling. But he stayed out of jail all because of me. I brought him in for a little questioning, and I turned the cameras off. I told him that I had just gotten out of a room with his boss, that his boss had shipped him and his little ring up the river for a lighter jail sentence.

But I had seen this as an opportunity. No one outside of the boss knew Pietro was involved. I told him that I would withhold his name from the bust list if he agreed to be my informant, and that he would be my informant until I believed I'd been repaid.

I skimmed him off the top of a large smuggling conviction, an action that is similar to embezzling. I told him when I thought I was repaid I would use his information to get the FBI to treat him as a witness, and that he could then go into witness protection where he could leave his life of crime free of charge with all his ill-gotten gains.

"What is it, Pietro? Tell me what's got you so excited," I said.

"Well," he said slowly, "it's got to do with those fancy human computer chips that you boys found out about a little while ago."

"Neural processors? How do you know about those? We haven't released any specifics to the public! How can they have anything to do with . . . with . . . anything?"

I could almost hear Pietro's smile.

"Well, apparently there were mob warehouses simply full of these things. At first, they were rounded up when the payments for the space stopped coming, and no one knew what they were. But now . . . now, the serious players know what they've gotten their hands on."

"Are they selling them?" My fingers were clenching my phone hard, and my knuckles had turned white.

"They sell some. But what concerns me more . . . is that they've started to use them."

"Do they even know how to use them?" I asked, slightly terrified.

"Yeah," Pietro said. "Some of the boxes came with instruction manuals."

"Christ . . . Mafia with neural processors. Sales to parties unknown." My thoughts were racing a million miles per second. This was not good, not good at all. Neural processors were considered illegal technology. Any distribution would be treated as cyber terrorism by all law enforcement agencies.

"Yeah, I thought that might be your reaction," said Pietro.

"But . . . but why would they use them? These things are used to control people. No one would willingly submit to having one put in."

"Yeah, the first few were forced, but after a while, one batch turned out to be some sort of superhuman thing. The guys that got those chips in their heads were all sorts of scary. They could move faster and shoot better and shit like that. Ever since they discovered that, well, let's just say some boys have warmed up to the idea of having superpowers."

My fingers tapped a nervous beat against my desk.

"Anything else?" I asked, almost fearing the answer.

"No . . . no, that's it. The only other thing I've got for you is an address on the east side of the island were one of the warehouses is."

I wrote the address down.

"Pietro . . . I think you've finally fulfilled our deal," I said softly.

"Yeah, I kinda figured this would be the one," he said grimly. "No way am I gonna be of use to you after this. The families are starting to pressure soldiers to get these things in their head . . . so they can be 'spitted,' is the term they use. Apparently, they get mind zapped by whoever puts a dollop of their spit on the back of their neck."

I was familiar with the concept.

"I'll put the paperwork in, Pietro. You better come into the office. I'll have Special Agent Smith take care of your arrangements. It's best if I don't take too personal an interest in your witness protection."

I moved to hang up the phone.

"Hey, Creed," Pietro said.

"Yeah?"

"I owe you a thank you. For a Fed, you aren't all bad."

"Good bye, Pietro."

I hung up the phone and then picked it right back up again.

***

The wheels were set in motion. The office was alerted. There was a new game afoot, and it reeked of the last game we had just played.

Balls were up in the air again. Pietro was being bundled away to a house in California. Agents were hitting the streets sniffing out leads, and a team was being brought in to barge into the warehouse.

Why do these things always start in warehouses?

I kicked my feet up on my desk and took out my cell phone and punched in my home number. Carol picked up the phone.

"Hello, Creed residence," she said curtly.

I cleared my throat.

"Hi, Carol. It's me."

"Oh, what do you want?" she said.

I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration.

"I'm coming back soon, but things have gotten a little hectic. Let Sarah out of her straps and tell her to make herself comfortable. She must need to go to the bathroom by now."

There was an awkward pause.

"Huh, anything else?"

"No," I said, dropping the phone like it was a snake.

I sunk my head into my waiting hands. Another headache. I'd been getting them a lot recently. Maybe I needed to start taking REC even when I wasn't coming off a bender. Or maybe Carol gave me headaches. Yeah...that was probably it.

***

Before I could leave, I had to sit down with the men in charge and organize a battle plan. Certain things had to be taken care of. People had to be alerted. Washington would probably send over more agents. The CIA in Langley would want to know. And the White House would need to be alerted. Basically, the United States was about to reopen all its books on neural processors.

I wasn't surprised then when I walked into Samuel Jones' office to find him on the phone. Leaning against a decorative bookcase, Jim Brown was sifting through emails on his cell.

Jim smiled at me from over the top of his phone.

Jones threw down the phone in disgust. "I really hate talking to Washington," he said. "Those guys don't think anyone who isn't part of the Washington bureau can wipe their own ass without their help."

Jim and I both raised eyebrows.

Jones waved at us both to sit down.

As we sat, Jones said, "They're treating this like a national terrorist threat. A special squad of terrorist agents will be arriving from Washington tomorrow morning."

Jim cleared his throat. "So, we're just to step aside? Let Washington do all the heavy lifting?"

Jones nodded. "They might draft people into their task force, but essentially, yes. We are to render aid in any way but not to interfere."

"That sounds a lot like stepping aside," I said. I couldn't tell if I was relieved to hear that, or frustrated.

Jones shrugged. "Look, I know that you were the one to bring us this information, and I'm glad you got a hold of that Moretti character when you did. They'll probably give you a commendation and then tell you to go twiddle your thumbs."

Jim looked up at the ceiling. "Why are they bringing in a terrorist unit? This sounds like run-of-the-mill mafia smuggling, not terror-inducing bomb threats."

Jones picked up the phone again. "Look, I don't know why, but when a new type of crime turns up, like the internet—or now these neural thingies—then the FBI decides how to classify the crime. This one got terrorism. I don't make the rules." He paused. "Now, I've got at least fifteen more phone calls to make to prepare the Agency for Washington's arrival. Tie up any loose ends you might have until this situation is resolved."

Jim and I nodded and left.

Jim stretched and yawned as we made our way to the elevator. The yawn turned into some sort of odd sounding groan, and he ran his hand through his receding blond hair.

"I guess I'll try and round up interview time with Dr. Briggs and Mr. Turner again, though they both were less than useful last time," Jim said.

I pushed the button for the elevator. "They've got no reason to be. Briggs managed his insanity conviction, so we can't touch him, while Turner's staring down an eighty-year conviction with no chance of appeal."

"Still, maybe I can manage some sort of deal with one of them. I'll have to talk with Jones again. This is above my pay grade."

The elevator doors slid shut, and we both leaned against the elevator wall lost in thought.

***

I staggered in through my front door. It was only one o'clock, but it felt like I had put in a full day. I was supposed to be on vacation, after all. Carol was sitting at the kitchen counter reading. She glanced at me over the top of Hello magazine. I had noticed a lot of those lying around since she had come to live here.

"Hi, Carol," I said, trying to be friendly. "Did you have a good day?"

Carol shrugged and returned her eyes to her magazine. "Not bad, I suppose. I still can't find a job that I like though."

Carol insisted that she find a job in a hospital somewhere. She was legally Dr. Carol Pearson.

"You don't have to rush into a job you might dislike," I said generously. "Take your time."

Carol snorted. "I'm hoping to find something soon, Jon. If you haven't noticed, I don't like being here."

I sighed.

"I'm not keeping you here, Carol, and you can go anywhere you please. I've told you a thousand times I'm not pressing charges for abducting me. Your knee is in a cast and you can walk with crutches. Nothing is keeping you here."

Carol glowered at me and tossed her magazine onto the kitchen counter. "You ass, you know exactly what's keeping me here."

I raised an eyebrow . . . I was this close to using my unfair advantage.

"The chip?" I asked softly . . . letting just a little bit of my beast's voice creep into my tone.

She didn't seem to notice my attempts at menace. "You're damn right! You know the terrible headaches I'll get if I'm separated from you for prolonged periods. Although it might be worth it."

That seemed a bit extreme.

"I know about the headaches, dear. Sarah gets them, too. But, please, enlighten me why it might almost be worth such pain just to be out of my house."

Carol just shrugged.

"You did break my leg after all. I apologize if I'm not over the moon about you."

I clenched my fists.

"I saved you from slavery from your father."

She stood awkwardly on her good leg.

"You saved me from his mastery for yours!" she screamed.

There was a pause.

"I'm going back to bed," Carol said. "I'm sorry I shouted."

I didn't say anything. I watched her make her weary way up the stairs. I went to the pantry and pulled out a loaf of bread. I threw a couple slices in the toaster. I poured myself some orange juice and had myself a mid-afternoon breakfast.

"Master?"

I turned. Sarah was in the doorway to the kitchen. Her long red hair hung gloriously around her face and trailed its way to her lower back. She was completely naked, and her youthful breasts proudly pointed upward.

I smiled at her.

That was all the invitation she needed. Her face lit up and her green eyes sparkled as she padded her way over and sank into my embrace. She nuzzled my neck with her mouth and nose.

"I know you told me to kneel in your presence," she said, "and I will if you want me to, Master. But I just wanted to feel your skin against mine."

I put my hand on her shoulders and softly trailed my fingertips down the curve of her back.

"I appreciate that thought, my girl," I said kindly, "but it's not your wants that matter now, is it?" My nubile little redhead shivered in my arms.

"No, Master," she whispered.

"Go up to our room and kneel in front of the bed. I'll be up in a moment to deal with you."

She smiled slightly. "Yes, Master. Of course, Master." She gracefully slid off my lap and padded softly up the stairs.