Stress Relief by Evangeline Anderson Page A

were basically synthetic whores
designed especially to service the agents. A well kept Agency secret, they
looked like women and acted like women at least to an extent, but beyond their
Playgirl bunny outward appearances their heads might as well have been stuffed
with cotton candy. They could walk and talk but anyone who spent any amount of
time with them would know at once that they were nothing but sex dolls with
extremely limited social functions.
    The girls could take a lot of rough usage but even their tough,
specially designed bodies had limits. The animalistic needs of the agents who
fucked them on a regular basis for stress relief sometimes exceeded those
limits but they were a necessary evil. No real woman could withstand the savage
lusts of any of the men who worked under Andi. If she’d tried to send them real
prostitutes to relieve their stress the police would have been looking for a
serial killer before the week was out.
    Andi looked at the faceted crystals again. Whether you called them
agents and girls or killers and whores, it didn’t matter. The point was that
she was responsible for them—at least the ones in her district. And right now,
according to the lines on her monitor and the indicators in the hidden tray,
Beta, Delta, and Gamma were all more or less stress free right now.
    Satisfied that three of the four agents under her supervision were
under control, Andi turned her attention to the large crystal indicator lying
at the far end of the velvet lined tray. She could see at once that there was
trouble. The indicator was glowing brightly enough to cast shadows in the dim,
dingy little room that served as her office. And when she put out her finger to
test its heat…
    “Ouch!” Andi pulled back her hand and put her finger in her mouth,
an involuntary reaction to the intense heat of the square cut crystal. God,
she’d never felt it that hot before! What the hell was going on with Alpha,
anyway? And why, oh why, couldn’t he have picked another time to need a date?
    Her racing thoughts were interrupted by a warning flicker from her
monitor. Andi keyed the panel closed quickly and turned towards it a feeling of
dread, like a heavy lead weight, filling the pit of her stomach. As always
there was no face displayed on the screen, only the logo of the Counter
Terrorist Agency rotating slowing on the screen.
    The CTA, known only as the Agency to those who worked for it and
not known at all by most citizens of the US, was an ultra secret government
organization. It had branches in all of the major cities in the world from Baghdad to Leningrad to Paris, and everywhere in
between. It was the brainchild of the CIA but since being green lighted by
legislation passed almost eight years before by the current administration, it
had quickly outgrown the supervision of its parent agency. Now it had surpassed
the boundaries laid down in the early days of the war on terror and was a law
unto itself. No one knew who ran it, or at least Andi didn’t, and she was
pretty sure none of the other employees of the Agency knew either. No one
policed it either, or if they did, they did it from far above Andi’s lowly
station.
    “Tibedeaux,” a cool female voice addressed her from the monitor.
Andi straightened involuntarily in her plain swivel-backed chair, knowing that
whoever was on the other end could see her even if she couldn’t see them. She
smoothed her shapeless blouse with nervous fingers and tried to look competent
and in control.
    “I’m here,” she said, staring at the gold CTA logo rotating
ceaselessly on the navy blue background. “You have instructions, Central?”
    “We have questions,” the cool voice rapped out.
    Andi tried not to flinch. The trick was not to let them think she
was frightened. If they knew she was frightened, they’d know she wasn’t in
control of the agents assigned to her care. She pasted an unconcerned, almost
bored look on her face and said mildly, “Ask.”
    “Our