Brick Logan sat in a booth at the rear of the Singapore bar, his back to the wall as always. He never took anything for granted, even though the weapons scanner in his cufflink had detected no explosive devices nearby and confirmed that the only gun in the room lay beneath the bartender's waistband. All the other metal on the premises registered as jewelry, aside from a couple of switchblades.

Brick wasn't worried about those; he'd taken on whole gangs of switchblade-wielders before and left them in ribbons. No, it was the more advanced weapons he had to watch out for with this foe. Doctor Diamandos was the highest of high-tech arms dealers. Fortunately, Brick's own stable of techno-nerds was up to the challenge. He had enough undetectable weaponry about his person to take down a small army.

Brick had come to Singapore to meet a new informant, a woman named Jordan who'd promised him an exclusive revelation about the Doctor. Brick had only a picture to go by, and once Jordan walked into the bar, he saw that the picture hadn't come close to doing her justice. The informant was a petite young woman with charmingly tousled, shoulder-length chestnut hair and huge eyes of such a perfect, piercing blue that Brick was sure she must be wearing contacts. But no, the closer she came, the more real her eyes appeared. From head to toe, she was as delicately beautiful as a china doll.

Jordan smiled as if sensing Logan's thoughts. She paused at the foot of the table, hand on cocked hip, inviting him to look her up and down. To enjoy. Her breasts were rather small for the spy's preference, but her waist was smaller still; he could imagine cupping his hands around it and feeling his fingers touch: a lovely image. Her legs, beneath a cobalt-blue minidress, were beautifully toned and slender. The dress itself had a zipper that ran the entire length of the front from top to bottom. Currently it was unzipped just short of her cleavage.

Jordan followed Brick's eyes teasingly, then slid into the booth opposite him. "Hello, Mr. Logan," she purred, laying her hands flat on the table. Her nails were a pale shell pink, immaculately manicured. "I must say, it's a pleasure to meet you after hearing so much about you all these years. I'm just dying to learn how many of the stories are true."

Brick smirked.

An hour later they were back in Logan's hotel room, as both of them had known they would be from the start. Jordan had had some extremely useful information about Doctor Diamandos, but Brick didn't need to act on it right away. Lovers always came before nemeses.

Brick allowed the girl to undress him, after a precautionary check of his cufflink. Jordan was unarmed, and the spy was confident that he could handle anything else she might throw at him, should she prove to be a double agent. They did, sometimes. But Brick always won out in the end - after the sex, if he could manage it.

First she took off his shirt, unfastening each button with her mouth and tickling his chest with her tongue. Then she ran her pink fingertips all over his carefully sculpted torso. He could tell from the look in her eyes that she liked the scars.

At last she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. Their tongues intertwined, wrestling delightfully while her hands slipped to his belt, his zipper, his boxers. He felt the clothes fall away and stepped out of the pile, kicking it out of sight beneath the bed. His manhood stood proudly, hugely erect.

Jordan licked her lips.

"Now me," she murmured. One hand rose to her zipper and slowly, oh so slowly, began to draw it downward. The top of a corset appeared, hiding her breasts but delightful nonetheless in its Victorian exoticness. It was the same silky blue as her dress, and as the zipper continued its descent, Brick noted the delicate patterns woven into the fabric. He appreciated quality work.

The zipper buzzed lower, and Brick caught his first glimpse of close-trimmed chestnut fur. Corseted and commando! The spy grinned in appreciation.

Jordan's zipper finished its descent, and as the two halves of the dress finally parted, Brick's grin turned into a rictus of horror. Jordan's cock was almost as big as his own.

Logan scrambled backwards, the backs of his knees bumping up against the mattress and dropping him onto the bed. He sat gaping as the transvestite's dick rose like a gun turret locking onto a target. The opening at its tip widened.

Every nerve ending screamed "danger." Brick tried to throw himself to one side, but shock had slowed his reflexes dramatically. Something shot from the tip of Jordan's penis and buried itself in Logan's right arm before he could move far enough out of the way. Looking down, he saw what appeared to be a needle made of bone.

So that was why it hadn't registered on his scanners, Brick realized, already too dulled by the drug to be much alarmed.

The last thing he saw was Jordan bending over him, smiling salaciously. Then his whole world went dark.

Brick had been drugged before, and the jolt with which he woke told him he'd been given a counter-drug to snap him back to alertness. Knowing that, he didn't bother feigning unconsciousness, but opened his eyes and did his best to take in his predicament as quickly as possible.

Above him, slick pipes like ancient bone kinked across a ceiling that was surprisingly far away. The gaps between the pipes were stuffed with clusters of globular lights and winking red camera eyes. There was something strangely organic about the whole arrangement. Brick didn't like it at all, but what he liked even less was that he couldn't move, nor could he feel anything below his neck.

Damn. This could be serious.

Brick bent his head forward and looked down the length of himself as best he could. He was nude, and all his parts were in place. That was good. What was not good was the multitude of tiny needles embedded in every inch of his skin from shoulders down, each connected to a lead running beyond his line of sight. What was worse was the thin tube piercing the crook of his arm and the thicker one embedded in his abdomen. But what was worst of all was the metal-and-rubber casing that rose from his groin, its own set of tubes and wires trailing out of sight.

Shit.

Brick let his head drop back and heard a faint splash. Something warm and wet quivered beneath his scalp. What the hell was all this?

He heard a door open somewhere beyond his feet. Brick hadn't noticed it when he'd looked up the first time, but of course, he'd been entirely focused on his body then. Now he lifted his head again to see a pudgy young man in a lab coat, open just enough to reveal a T-shirt with the letters "USC," approach him with the detached interest of a research scientist. His sneakers were at Brick's eye level, leading the spy to conclude that he must be lying in a pool inlaid in the floor.

"Hey," said the technician, squatting beside Brick with a casual ease. He twiddled with some of the wires in his captive's skin, giving Brick a few brief, welcome flashes of sensation, then moved on to the casing around Brick's dick.

"Don't touch that!," Brick wanted to snap, but he knew better than to give his enemy the satisfaction of seeing his discomfort. Instead, he set his face in a mask of disdain and bore the indignity as best he could. He'd find a way out of this trap in the end; he always did. Then they'd pay. Jordan, the technician, Doctor Diamandos, and whoever else was behind this freaky, perverted spectacle. They'd all pay.

Without another word, the technician rose and left the way he'd come.

Brick wallowed helplessly in his pool for several minutes before the door opened again. The man who - there was no other word for it - slithered into the room was shirtless, his torso every bit as chiseled as Brick's own, but paler, leaner, and scarless. His legs were encased in skin-tight black leather that rose to just below the tips of his hip bones and sank beneath a pair of elaborately buckled, thick-soled black boots. His hair was a bird's nest of long, platinum spikes; his eyes were thick with eyeliner; and his too-sensual lips were pursed in an exquisite smirk.

He strode to the foot of Brick's pool and planted himself squarely between the spy's spread legs.

"Who the hell are you?" Brick snarled. "And where's Doctor Diamandos?"

The stranger suppressed a laugh. "Doctor Diamandos isn't a part of this particular party; he was just the lure we used to bring you here. To me."

Brick hid his dismay with practiced ease. "And you are?"

"Guy Wylde." The stranger squatted to bring his eyes closer to Brick's. "Don't worry; I know you've never heard of me. You might say I'm an up-and-comer in the business."

Brick was starting to get a crick in his neck. Feigning disinterest, he let his head drop back into the pool. "Too bad. Doctor Diamandos would have been more of a challenge."

"Actually," said Wylde, "he wasn't. No more than you'll be."

Brick felt a trickle of unease. He hadn't been able to put Doctor Diamandos out of commission, and they'd been battling one another for years. Surely this skinny, freaky kid hadn't - no, he must be lying. He was trying to psych Brick out.

The kid did seem almost preternaturally confident, though. Brick decided that, no matter how ridiculous this new enemy might look, Brick would be wise not to take him for granted.

Wylde flowed to his feet and moved around the pool to crouch again at Brick's head. Brick didn't deign to look at him, so Wylde bent in close and murmured in his ear. "I'm going to tell you just enough about what we're doing to help you struggle against it. After all, that'll only extend the pleasure - for you as well as for us."

He dipped a finger in the pool and then lifted it high enough for Brick to see. Translucent pink gel oozed the length of the digit. "This is a sensory deprivation tank. You might have experienced something similar before, for the sake of experimentation, or conditioning - or perhaps even pleasure." He chuckled. "And trust me: this tank will be a pleasure too, in the end. At first, though, all you'll feel is...nothing."

Wylde laid the pink finger against one of the wires near Brick's groin and gave it a practiced nudge. Exquisite sensation flared around the point, though the captive had no idea how his dick had responded. That was a worry.

The blond man released the wire and Brick's skin fell back into numbness. "It's funny, isn't it," Wylde said, "how quickly we come to miss the littlest sensory pleasures, the things we never even notice under normal circumstances? But in circumstances like yours, both mind and body learn to crave even the tiniest sensation, to revel in it. I'm sure you're familiar with the phenomenon. Not that familiarity will do you any good when the phenomenon hits you."

He straightened and gestured to a point beyond Brick's feet. Soon enough, the pudgy tech reappeared pushing a cart. Brick heard clanking but couldn't see what was causing it.

"I'm the idea man," Wylde said, "and Sam here is the interdisciplinary egghead who turns those ideas into reality. Together we've assembled a team of specialists in the fields of acupuncture; acupressure; subliminal imprinting; endocrinology; and, of course, tailored pharmaceuticals. All to produce a system capable of twisting even the strongest-willed superspy into-" he chuckled, "well, whatever we want him to be."

Brick clenched his jaw. "Good luck," he sneered. "I've outlasted dozens of tortures crueler than this one."

Wylde's grin grew feral. "But that's the thing, Brick: you can't outlast this one. It will simply go on and on, for as long as it takes to break you."

"I'll die before that happens."

Sam leaned forward, smiling cheerfully. "Actually, Brick, you won't. You can't. See that tube in your stomach? We'll be feeding you the whole time, so you won't starve; and you'll stay hydrated through the tube in your arm."

"I assume that's where the drugs come in, too," Brick grated. It was getting harder to hold onto his vaunted stoicism, but he'd manage. And he would beat this thing in the end. He didn't know how yet, but he would. He always did.

Sam shrugged placidly and continued. "Your elimination needs will be taken care of by another device in your rectum - I don't suppose you can feel that one right now, but it's there - and by this-" he gestured toward the casing around Brick's cock.

Wylde laid a hand on the tech's shoulder to cut him off. "Although," he purred, "I'm sure you can guess that those two devices serve more than one purpose."

Despite himself, Brick grimaced. "I get it. You plan to make me the third corner of some perverted little threesome."

Wylde feigned surprise. "Can't two men just be friends?" He let the mockery hang in the air for a moment, then smiled. "No, Brick, Sam and I aren't lovers. But we have been friends since high school. And we do bat for the same team; we just have a different preference in pitchers."

Brick snorted. "So you are queers. And you think you can make me one, too."

His captor regarded him with the sort of look he might have given a crippled cockroach. "Let's just say we're going to broaden your horizons." He glanced at the technician. "All right, Sam, I've had just about all the Neanderthal-ese I can take for now. Let's get started."

Brick felt the first twinge of genuine panic when Sam began attaching electrodes to his scalp. His only idea of escape so far had hinged on pretending to be brainwashed before he really did succumb; but if they had a way to measure his brainwaves, that idea was out the window. What was left to him, then?

His thoughts bounced wildly around his paralyzed head; Sam had inserted more needles, and now the only part of himself that Brick could move or feel was his eyes. Unfortunately, those had been clamped open, so he didn't even have the freedom to close them when the blackout visor descended over his face. Tiny misters fired up at the corners, keeping his eyeballs from drying out now that he'd lost the freedom to blink. He wondered if the mist would be enough to hide the subliminal images, when they started. He wondered if that was what Doctor Diamandos had wondered.

Dammit, Wylde had to be lying about Diamandos. He had to be. And Brick would find a way out of this in the end. That was how it always worked.

Someone - Brick assumed it was Sam - placed a pair of thick headphones over Brick's ears, and then he was alone in the dark, silent numbness.

There was absolutely no way to tell how much time had passed. Brick floated in a sensationless vacuum with only his mind to keep him company...and to torture him. Occasionally he'd hear a sound, see a flash of light, feel a prick of pain or pleasure. There was no way to know whether these were the beginnings of the subliminals or merely his own mind reacting to the lack of external input.

It maddened Brick, not knowing what to fight against, or how.

He continued to float, frustration alternating with failed plotting alternating with, of all things, boredom.

Timeless time continued to pass, and at last he became too weary to do anything but sleep.

Jordan stepped out onto the helipad and took a deep, delightful breath of salty air. Guy's island retreat was in international waters, far enough away from the mainland to have no worries about pollution, legal issues, or accidental discovery. Not that the island was completely uncharted; that would have been too much to hope for. But it was listed on most maps as a nature preserve.

Thinking of the long, long history of fictional supervillains with island hideaways, Jordan shook his head and chuckled. Guy had been very specific about wanting one for himself, and luckily, he'd had the money and the connections to get what he wanted.

Guy always got what he wanted, and now he had what he wanted most of all.

Jordan chuckled again to think of the role he'd played in Brick's takedown: a bone from a boner! And the look on Logan's face when he'd seen what Jordan really had to offer! "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Jordan snickered to himself. His Michael Palin impression was terrible, but that was all right; the gate guards were too far away to hear him. He smiled and waved to them.

"Looking good, Jordan," Ray nodded as he approached. The Maori was always as friendly as professionalism allowed, but Jordan knew he secretly loved girly-boys, and that was exactly how Jordan had chosen to present today: a tight Hello Kitty T-shirt over cut-off jeans and sandals, with his hair tied back and his nails still polished.

"Thanks, Ray," he grinned. He gave the guard's bicep a friendly squeeze and air-kissed the other man so he wouldn't feel left out. Then he slipped inside.

The upper floors of Guy's retreat were all vast, white space and brushed steel, with plenty of windows to let in all that wonderful South Pacific sunlight. Jordan hummed to himself as he strolled the halls, poking his head into an office here or there to greet a friend, or just pausing a moment to enjoy a favorite piece of artwork. Guy, being Guy, tended toward flashy modern pieces; but Jordan didn't mind. He liked a bit of edge now and then.

His fingers brushed the length of a chrome banister as he descended to the lower levels. Being underground, the labs had no natural sunlight, so Guy had gone with more of a cyberpunk/Giger-esque look there. Jordan wended his way through corridors lined with a bizarre mixture of bonelike, pipelike shapes, stopping at last before a door outlined with a yellow and black caution barrier. He punched in his eight-digit keycode, then leaned forward for the retinal scan.

The door whooshed open.

More hallways, now with videocameras and other, increasingly aggressive security devices. More doors with different keycodes and scans. Guards with guns. Jordan breezed through them all and arrived at last at a door with a nameplate marked simply "Mackenzie." He knocked and entered without waiting for a response.

Sam looked up from his control panel and grinned. "Hey, Woody."

Jordan beamed back at him. "Woody" was their little in-joke, based on the unique body modification that Sam had designed just for him. Apart from the two of them, only Guy and the surgeon who'd implanted it knew all its many uses.

Jordan rolled an extra chair beside Sam's and snuggled in next to him. They shared a quick peck, then turned to the central monitor. Onscreen, Brick Logan lay motionless within his pool, his beautiful nude body pierced by hundreds of needle-tipped leads. His eyes and ears were hidden, but the rest of his face was bare.

Jordan's gaze wandered along the sharp edges of the captive's jaw, darkened now with stubble. The paralyzing needles held it closed, which Jordan couldn't help thinking was a shame. He'd enjoyed the way Brick had looked back in the hotel room, mouth hanging slack, eyes barely cracked to show a hint of white. The baddest of badass superspies, totally at the mercy of a teeny tiny tranny.

Pity that badass superspies weren't quite to Jordan's taste. He looked back at Sam, dressed today in a black T-shirt printed with a full-color reproduction of the original 1977 Star Wars poster. The walls around his desk were decorated with more movie posters, Dilbert cartoons, and a small pink plaque reading, "You don't have to be queer to work here, but it helps!"

Jordan smiled fondly. Let Brick soak in his hot tub for as long as he liked. Jordan had all he needed right here.

"How's the new recruit coming along?" he asked after a moment.

Sam leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands behind his head. "Well, we've cracked the first lock, at least." He paused as Jordan looked confused. "Don't tell me you still don't know how the process works after all this time."

"Nope. I've never had the need or the interest before now. But since Brick is my recruit, in a way, and since he's so special...." Jordan shrugged easily. "Besides, it gives me an excuse to spend a little more time with you. I've been away on too many assignments lately."

Sam grinned. "You really have." He squeezed Jordan's knee, but eagerness to explain trumped eagerness to explore - for the moment, at least. "Okay, you know those fancy high-tech safes that have a whole stack of locks to breach before you get to the goods? Well, that's Brick's mind. We have to sneak our way in one trick at a time, or alarms go off all over the place and the whole thing either shuts down or blows up or both." He shrugged. "I'm betting both in Brick's case. He'd destroy himself before he let us in on purpose. So we had to wait for him to let his guard down before we could even make our first move."

Sam tapped a side screen displaying a readout of what Jordan took to be brain waves. "Normally, subjects in the recruitment pool enter an altered state of consciousness in less than an hour. That's when we start on the hypnotics - small doses at first, barely noticeable. But Brick had already survived hundreds of different kinds of torture and mental manipulation before he ever got to us. I'm sure he knows all about theta states, and he at least thinks he knows how to fight back against anything."

Jordan rolled his eyes. He'd seen that type plenty of times. He'd taken down that type plenty of times.

"Soooo...." Once more Sam grinned. "We left him entirely alone at first: no drugs, no subliminals, nothing whatsoever. We just let him wear himself out shadow-boxing his own hallucinations. You should have seen the way his brainwaves spiked and bounced. No theta stages of more than thirty seconds at a time. Basically, it was just twenty-eight hours of pure paranoia."

"Twenty-eight?!"

"Five hours longer than Diamandos." Sam smirked. "But even a hardass like Brick has to crash sometime. He finally fell asleep; and once we'd established a nice, stable REM pattern, we slipped in the first little trickle of hypnotics - about half of what we normally start with. Brick's just too savvy to risk anything stronger. Even in his sleep, he might catch on to us and start fighting back while he still had a chance."

Jordan frowned. "But Guy wants him to fight, doesn't he?"

"Oh, sure," Sam shrugged. "To a certain extent. And don't worry; you'll see plenty of that as we go along. But overall, we're aiming for a smooth transition; it'll give him a more useful, stable personality in the end."

Ah, now Jordan understood. He'd seen Diamandos after his recruitment. "You didn't quite get that last time, did you?"

"No," Sam winced. "The Doctor was our first attempt at breaking a really first-rate ego. When we realized the usual methods weren't working on him, we...I guess you could say we overcompensated." He sighed. "Well, better to work out the kinks on him and get the process right with Brick. There's a lot more at stake this time."

"Not least Guy's fantasy of topping the world's greatest superspy."

"Not least."