Dress Off 07: Pillar of Purgatory

As she hit the bottom of the stairs, she realised she was heading straight towards O's research labs. Maybe if she could find some gear, she might be able to improvise some kind of last ditch stand. Quite why the Director was acting so weirdly, and quite why security were chasing through her own Headquarters were questions that Brittney hadn't even been given the opportunity to stop, breath, and process. Right now her instincts were telling her to run first, reflect later.

The door to O's research lab was unlocked and unguarded, certainly not as per standard operating procedure. Brittney wasn't about to lodge a formal complaint though, and dived through the door to find the large open space beyond helpfully empty. Skidding to a halt, Brittney lunged at a nearby table, flipped it over and rammed it against the door. She quickly added some chairs and a second table to the impromptu wall of furniture. It wouldn't hold for long, but it would slow down her pursuers for a few precious seconds.

Panting and hunched over, and with her hands on her knees, Brittney began to survey her options. It was an activity that took a distressingly short amount of time to complete.

She was in the process of looking for some alternative exit from the research labs when she was surprised by a squeaky voice that piped from a nearby collection of target mannequins.

"St... stop right there, or... or... I'll shoot!"

Brittney finally got her breathing under control and peered cautiously at the mannequins. "Who's there?" she asked, urgency evident in her voice as she heard a thump against the door as the guards tried to break in through the blockade she'd improvised.

Brittney took one step towards the mannequin and then swore as a small grey sphere rolled towards her. Too late she tried to dive for cover, but the sphere had already erupted into a silvery mist and enveloped around Brittney even as she skidded behind a large table full of lab equipment.

Gritting her teeth, Britney kept her head down and out of sight, even as she felt her clothes begin to disintegrate one thread at a time. Stripper mist. Fuck! Fuckity fuck, fuck!

"'O', is that you?!" Brittney called out, "It's me, Agent Barecat! Brittney, remember?"

"B... Brittney?" The response came. "You're... you're not... well... you know..."

"No, I very much _don't_ know," Brittney said, trying with one hand to keep her clothes on but finding them slipping through her fingers as the mist disintegrated the clothing with merciless efficiency. "What the hell is going on around here?!"

Brittney heard movement from where the mannequins were piled up, and cautiously lifted her head up to look. The barricade was beginning to give way as the guards struggled to break in, and naked-behind-a-table really wasn't going to be a viable defensive position when they succeeded.

Olivia 'O' Berkeley was similarly peering around from the cover she'd taken, and was alternating between looking nervously at where Brittney was hiding and looking apprehensively at the door.

At least 'O' looked like she was acting normally, even if "acting normally" meant acting like someone who was extremely confused and had just doused someone on her side with friendly fire.

The door wouldn't hold for more than a few more seconds, and with a groan, Brittney jumped up from the table and dashed over to where 'O' was hiding. That meant leaving the last shreds of her clothing behind as her sudden movements were too much for the last dying threads that held the final fragments of her clothing together. Completely naked and with fiery red hair streaming from her head like an apocalyptic comet, Brittney slid to a halt beside a terrified Olivia, who was clutching her lab coat around her as if it were a defensive shield, dropped the Director's laptop on the ground and held up two hands to show Olivia that she was a friend.

Olivia looked at her with fear for a moment, but then a relieved smile broke out on her face. "Oh Brittney, so good to see you... I mean... all of..." she waved a hand and took in the entirety of Brittney Barecat's now entirely bare body. "I thought... after..." her voice trailed off.

"What happened here 'O', hurry!"

"The Director, the other agents, they were all watching that silly Lesbian Strip Humiliation competition! You know, the one with Trueheart and Carson and, oh... poor Monica!" Olivia blurted out. "Something happened, it was like... like they were suddenly in a trance! They.. they sent all non-essential personnel away and then locked down the building! I think the only reason..." Olivia was interrupted as the door partly gave way and a couple of arms reached around to speed up the dismantling of the barricade blocking Brittney's pursuers from their prey.

Brittney grabbed Olivia by the arms. "Is there another way out of here?"

"No... no... that door's the only way in. I tried the service elevator but it seems to be jammed. Other than that there is only the vehicle entrance and we'll never be able to run past the guards if they've secured the main gate at the driveway entrance!"

Brittney popped her head up again and surveyed the lab again, as she tried to focus on escape and not on the fact that the guards were practically pushing their way in and would soon be on top of them.

Across the the equipment-strewn room, Brittney's eyes fell on their salvation. Crouching down again she faced Olivia. "Well, what about the car over there? Is it operational?"

Olivia gave a cursory glance in the direction of the sleek black Audi RS 3 sedan that was sitting some 25 metres away surrounded by gear.

"Well yes," babbled Olivia as she nervously held another stripper mist grenade at the ready to fling at the guards, "yes, I suppose it is, but I can't drive so it's not much use is it!"

Brittney grabbed Olivia by the shoulders and held her gaze for a moment, and was rewarded as the agency's chief scientist took a deep breath and finally focussed on her naked fellow agent.

"Well," Brittney said calmly, "I can. So," Brittney grabbed the Director's recently liberated laptop from the ground where she'd dropped it, took the stripper mist grenade out of Olivia's unprotesting hands, and gave her the laptop to hold instead, "let's get the hell out of here!" Brittney stood up just as the final parts of the barricade gave way, and four guards barrelled into the room. With one swift movement, Brittney lobbed the grenade their way, took hold of Olivia's arm, and pulled her colleague to her feet.

"Run!"

The grenade exploded into a mist that sent the guards instinctively retreating back for a few seconds, and that was all the time Brittney and Olivia needed to cover the distance to the car. As they ran, Olivia pointed an object at the vehicle entrance garage door, and the doors slowly began to slide up with a metallic grinding noise. The car key was sitting helpfully in the ignition, and Brittney had already deposited her naked posterior on the smooth leather driver's seat when she realised that Olivia was no longer with her. She'd let go of Olivia's arm while opening the driver's side door, and the scientist had taken the opportunity to dash over a small bench full of toys, and was furiously stashing some gadgets into her lab pockets.

"Come on Olivia!" Brittney cried out, and Olivia looked at her, and then the door from which the guards were now cautiously re-emerging from, and then back at Brittney. "Jeepers!" Brittney heard Oliiva exclaim, and with one last lunge she grabbed a large bazooka-like shoulder-mounted gadget while simultaneously juggling the laptop Brittney had entrusted her with.

Tottering back to the car, Brittney fired up the engine as Olivia clambered in, tossed the bazooka unceremoniously into the back seats, and then clasped the laptop to her chest.

"Go, go!" Olivia said. Brittney did not need a second invitation. The car shot forward, smashing through some trolleys of lab gear and causing Olivia to moan as she saw her equipment strewn across the floor. Brittney ignored her and simply gunned it towards the vehicle entrance, and Olivia took a moment out of lamenting the state her lab was being left in to emit an high pitched squeak as the car accelerated up the ramp beyond the garage doors and blasted past a group of guards who had set up camp by the barrier arm. The barrier arm had thankfully been designed for a common warehouse rather than for it's most recent role as a high security secret headquarters, and the car smashed through it with relative ease, allowing Brittney to swerve with perfect control into a long street that led away from the warehouse and towards the city.

As they put distance between themselves and HQ, Brittney slowly got her breathing back under control. Naked as the day she was born, the gorgeous red-head leaned back in the seat and sighed. Switching the windscreen wipers on, she drove on into the wintery rain she'd only recently come in from.

"Okay, that was definitely not how I saw this visit to HQ going!" She said, the adrenalin rush from constantly needing to react to danger now giving way to confusion as to why exactly she was having to react to danger in the first place.

Olivia nodded mutely, and then held the laptop out in front of her, a thoughtful expression on her face.

Brittney looked up and into the rear view mirror. It was past sunset and with dark rain clouds already overhead, there was a gloominess to the world outside that perfectly matched the mood of the women in the speeding black car. She had to consciously force herself to slow down. Attracting the attention of local law enforcement and collecting a speeding ticket given her current lack of attire would not help the situation at all. When she finally satisfied herself that there was no sign of pursuit, she turned and looked at Olivia quizzically.

"So what do you mean they were in a trance, why were you downstairs in the lab all alone, and how on earth is it that you can't drive a car?!"

Olivia seemed to bridle at the last point in particular. "Well, how on earth is it that you can't construct a perfectly engineered grenade that will strip anyone in seconds? I mean, it's just not a skill I've learnt, okay? I had more important things to focus on."

"But you actually built this car!" Brittney said, waving a hand at a car dashboard that have been heavily modified to include access to a number of enterprising add-ons and extras of Olivia's own devising.

"Well, I've built cameras before too but it doesn't make me a film director!" Olivia retorted.

Brittney wasn't sure the analogy stacked up, but as she was currently driving naked towards a city with no actual plan of what to do next, she decided it probably best to focus on the other questions first. "Okay, so why were they in a trance, and how come you weren't affected?"

Olivia was looking critically at the laptop, and then gingerly open the case up, ignoring Brittney's questions for the moment.

"'O'?" Brittney prompted, as they passed the first city limit signs and buildings hovered into view on both sides.

"What, oh yeah, well, I don't know - some kind of hypnosis I expect. That awful competition that was being live streamed. You know. The one with Trueheart and Carson and my poor Monica of course, who I should really never have let go undercover like that! My guess is that whoever was organising it was piggybacking some kind of hypnotic signal that over time made the viewers susceptible. Impressive technology actually, arguably more effective than even my hocus-pocus hot pants!" Olivia sniffed at the apparent professional indignity of having to concede she'd been out-researched by somebody that she'd previously never even heard of.

Brittney's heart skipped a beat. Bree Carson had been her mentor and her rescuer when Elizabeth Harrington had held her trapped and facing total and complete naked humiliation, strapped to a machine that would have made her very publicly orgasm in front of some of the most important people in her old life as Courtney Smith. Agent Monica Fairchild was someone that she knew was near and dear to Bree. She also knew Monica was a computer whiz in 'O's technical department, and judging by Olivia's tone, they were in some serious kind of trouble.

"Are Tess, Bree and Monica okay?" Brittney asked, eyes focussed on the road ahead but her mind racing with possibilities.

"Oh, I don't know for sure," replied Olivia, who had returned to inspecting the laptop Brittney had given her. "I wasn't really watching. I was working on a special present for Tom when he got back from that that adventure of his with Shackleton in Brisbane! Last thing I really saw before the Director starting going crazy was that Trueheart was naked and strapped to something with a whole bunch of other women. I didn't see Carson or Monica. Say, " Olivia paused and finally tore her eyes of the laptop to look at Brittney, "isn't this the Director's own laptop?"

"Yeah, I took it from her office when things started to go south." Brittney replied. So, Tess was captured, and Tom, Stacey and a whole bunch of other agents were currently a world away in Brisbane. Brittney tapped the driving wheel thoughtfully, and then gave a surprised "hey!" when 'O' suddenly ripped the battery out of the laptop and tossed it in the back seat.

"We needed access to that laptop to find information! Especially if the Director was watching the contest on that device!" Brittney said.

"Yes, but the laptop when powered up would also be transmitting a signal back to HQ as a theft counter-measure!" Olivia said, waving away Brittney's objections, and then looking up at the road ahead determinedly. "We need to find Monica, she's the real expert with computers and she'll be able to figure this out!"

Brittney thought for a moment and then nodded her agreement. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. We need to find Bree and Monica. Let's just hope they're still active and someplace we can track them down to. Otherwise we're all by ourselves without much of a clue about what's going on."

Olivia nodded and then seemed to brighten up slightly. "Oh that's reassuring then, I tend to do my best work when that's the case!"

Brittney couldn't suppress a laugh at that, and patted the scientist's leg as she accelerated again into the dark Portland night. "Come on 'O', time to get you out into the field at last!"

**************

[Apologies to all long-standing readers for the delays. The story continues in "Dress Off 8: Hotpants in Helsinki", coming early March 2020. Always happy to answer messages, and please leave constructive criticism and compliments either in the comments or in my inbox. Thanks for reading.]