device 1: special contact lenses

"My daughter, as you know, is a gifted chemist," Nicole said as she snapped open a pouch on her belt. Her fingers dug inside and withdrew a small plastic case, which she also snapped open. A small volume of clear liquid splashed out, but Nicole carefully held the case upright so it wouldn't spill completely empty. She reached in with one finger.

"The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as they say," Nicole continued. "I myself am a gifted engineer. I'd like to show you one of my most brilliant inventions." She produced a contact lens from the plastic case.

Rocketgirl wisely decided she didn't want to know what made the contact lens so special, so she squinted her eyes tightly shut. Nicole of course anticipated this and was prepared. She began by putting fingers above and below Melissa's right eye and pulling them apart to straighten the heroine's eyelids and pull them taut. Then she blew gently on Melissa's left eye, hoping the air current would be sufficient to **** her eye open. She only needed a moment -- but Melissa proved too strong. So finally Nicole decided to go for both eyes at once.

She took the second lens out of the case and put the case down. She used her fingers to pry the heroine's eyelids as taut as she could, the fingers holding the contact lenses poised to strike the instant the heroine's eyes snapped open. Nicole smiled because she knew she could make Melissa open her eyes.

She waited a few minutes to confuse Melissa. The heroine was whimpering with anxiety, uncertain what Nicole had planned but knowing the contact lenses were mere milimeters from her eyes.

As the heroine's resolve began to wane, Nicole made her move. Without warning, she bit down hard on Rocketgirl's right nipple, her teeth sinking all the way through to make contact and close her jaw.

"YEEEEEEEEOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!" Rocketgirl screamed in agony, her eyes involuntarily shooting wide open in reaction to the pain. The moment was all Nicole needed, and she plunked the contacts down into the heroine's exposed eyes.

Rocketgirl clamped her eyes closed again, but it was too late. She could feel the invaders resting on her irises. She blinked hard, rolled her eyes around, tried everything she could think of to loosen the contact lenses and make them fall from her eyes, but to no avail.

Finally she settled down, resigned to being unable to get rid of the contact lenses -- at least for now. She sighed heavily and stared up at Nicole's patient, evil smile.

"All settled down now?" Nicole asked. "Good. The contact lenses you're wearing are revolutionary. With a simple app on my phone, I can change how you see the world." She held up her cell phone as if to demonstrate.

"For instance, I can make those lenses into mirrors," she tapped her phone, and suddenly Melissa couldn't see anything.

"Ahh! Ahh! Oh my god! What are you doing?" the heroine screamed blindly. She heard Nicole tap again, and the mirror effect faded back to clear lenses.

"I could give you x-ray vision," Nicole said with another tap, then swayed seductively in front of Melissa's face, showing off her boobs. "Like what you see?" Melissa gulped; she was, indeed, turned on, remembering what this sexy woman had done in her nether regions a few minutes earlier.

"I can make you see anything I want," Nicole said with another tap. Suddenly Rocketgirl saw a snake slithering up the table, ready to strike at her face. She flailed in a futile attempt to break her bonds and shield her face, but the threat itself soon dissolved as Nicole tapped again. "...even things that aren't really there."

Oh no, Melissa thought. If she can alter my perception of reality, how will I know what's real? How can I fight crime? How can I live my life?

"The lenses work through a microframe of wires that receive and interpret signals from receptors on the outside of the lens," Nicole explained. She tapped again and Melissa watched a series of hexagons turn before her eyes, revealing a network of wires that expanded across her entire field of vision. "The effect is then projected on a series of screens on the interior of the lens," Nicole finished. She tapped again and Melissa watched the hexagons flip back to hide the wires from her view.

Rocketgirl took a few deep breaths to calm herself. She reminded herself that she was Rocketgirl, a gifted and intelligent superheroine. Hell, as soon as she broke these bonds, she could simply take the contact lenses out.

"As long as you're restrained like this, or exposed to any of your other weaknesses, I can use these contact lenses to do a variety of things," Nicole went on. "But I know what you're thinking: I can't control you forever. As soon as you get the chance, I know you'll simply tear those things from your eyes. And that is where their most useful feature comes in."

Rocketgirl's heart pounded with dread. What was this "most useful feature?" She didn't want to find out. Unfortunately, Nicole didn't give her a choice.

Nicole raised her phone and smiled wickedly down at Rocketgirl, then tapped again. Instantly Rocketgirl's field of vision was encompassed by rapidly pulsing flashes of white light. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" she screamed. It was like a strobe light had been set off in the room, and it covered everything. Between flashes of light there were glimpses of the room itself, and Rocketgirl was only a little surprised to see that Nicole and Hannah did not appear to be distracted by the flashing light.

Rocketgirl's head swam as dizziness overtook her. She turned her head this way and that, trying to turn away from the flashing light. "No, no, no, no!" she cried. "Make it stop! Turn it off! Please!" She closed her eyes, but even that didn't stop the strobe light from flashing brightly directly into her corneas. And this is how, through the headache blossoming inside her, she finally realized the strobe lights were coming from inside the contact lenses.

She stopped screaming and whimpering, stopped whipping her head around, even stopped blinking her eyes. Nicole looked down triumphantly into her pinpoint, constricted pupils. "Oh, no," Rocketgirl sighed as the strobe effect continued.

"Oh, yes," Nicole said, holding her phone up in front of Rocketgirl's face. She held it there and made her next move very slowly, hoping against all odds that Rocketgirl would understand what she was trying to show her.

Nicole's finger depressed a slider bar at the bottom of the screen. She gradually slid her finger across the screen from left to right. As she did, the flashes grew shorter in duration and their pace increased. As Nicole's finger reached the right side of the screen, Rocketgirl was seeing roughly 6,000 flashes per second. The effect was more than disorienting.

Nicole left the strobe flashing that quickly for a full ten minutes. She watched with pleasure as Rocketgirl twitched and spasmed under the relentless visual ****. As time went on, the heroine's breathing slowed significantly, and her spasms became less frequent. She began to drool.

Nicole chose this moment to switch off the strobe effect, returning the contact lenses to fully transparent. Rocketgirl didn't blink. Nicole began to fear she'd overdone it. She leaned down and blew gently into the heroine's eyes. Rocketgirl blinked subconsciously. "Oh thank God," Nicole said.

"You didn't kill her, did you?" Hannah asked from the lab table.

"No, dear, but I think it's safe to say we'll be able to keep her completely under control with her existing weaknesses," Nicole responded. She clasped her hands under her chin and bounced with joy as she stared down at their prey. "I can hardly wait to show her what else we have for her."