The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Eidolon

“We found Synapse,” Io said in our big ‘War Room’ at the Borealis. She looked exhausted with heavy bags under her eyes, but somehow, she still pulled off yummy. Well, not somehow. I watched her put on her makeup and shower before she called this meeting. She made sure to leave the eyes looking like shit so she could show us how tired she was, how hard she had been working. She wanted us to be impressed with her hard work while simultaneously depressed that we hadn’t done more to find Synapse ourselves.

What a fucking cunt.

But I didn’t call her out on it. She didn’t know that I was learning to stay inside of the shadows. That ever since playing with Perla, I was learning to stay in the Gray rather than rush through it. In the Gray, I could move through people, I could even touch some essence of a person. Not quite their soul because clearly Perla enjoyed a very intimate part of her anatomy that I was able to touch. But I could do more than step through shadows these days, and that included lurking inside the shadows of Io’s room to watch her shower. It included waiting to catch her masturbating one night just to know the smell of her arousal. But it never happened, and I didn’t have forever to waste.

Perla and I had hit a dead-end in our search for the blue-haired woman, so I was back to trying to get one step ahead of Io. But the dark-skinned bitch had given me nothing but a few quick and efficient showers — the freak didn’t even sigh with relief when the hot water hit her flesh after a long day.

“Really?” Bastille said, standing up. She wore long sleeves and pants wherever she went these days, hoping we wouldn’t notice her battered wife look. But they weren’t bruises, were they, Bastille? No. Burns from late night sessions with Surya. They called it training, but the three of us knew better.

“Where? Should we suit up?”

Io nodded. “There is a warehouse downtown, and a penthouse in the Sinclair Building. Yesterday, I found footage of the blue-haired woman traveling back and forth between those places.” Io paused for dramatic effect with a smug look as though there was press here — god, I wanted to bend her over backwards and bury that cocky expression between my legs. “And Synapse was with her.”

It was Kori’s turn to stand up dramatically along with Surya and Bastille. Kori was going for her simple and basic Kansas farm-girl look — if this girl was raised in a private boarding school for the bitchy instead of, y’know, on a goddamn farm. Blonde. Long straight hair. Blue eyes (the boys do love the Aryan bitches). Perky tits. Bubble ass. Tiny skirt. Heels. Crop top. Bimbo as hell — which probably matched what was going on in her brain as she had done absolutely fucking nothing to find Synapse. Even less than Surya and Bastille. I hadn’t bothered to follow her to make sure, but she kept going to a studio downtown with the creep we saved from Hauzer that Synapse didn’t like. I bet you he was promising her an acting gig while actually producing mountains of porn with her.

Or I was just horny as fuck. Take your pick.

“Then let’s go,” Kori said. I anticipated a vocal fry for today’s bimbo look, but she had decided to avoid valley girl in favor of that annoying influencer pseudo whisper. Was she doing ASMR lately? I rolled my eyes before clearing my throat to get the room’s attention.

“I agree,” Io said. “Let’s go over the perimeter of these targets and decide which one to prioritize before —”

“Ahem,” I said louder. I hate being fucking ignored.

Io sighed. “What ’Lon?”

“After what happened last time, you want to just rush in there?”

Kori, Bastille, and Surya blushed and looked away. But Io clenched her jaw. Good. I’ve been aching for a fight.

“Synapse has been missing for weeks,” she said. “And you want to wait?”

Oh yes, she’s in such a fucking rush. That’s why she took a shower and did her makeup before calling this meeting. Goddamn bitch.

“Let me get this straight,” I said as sweetly as I could. “Synapse has been missing for weeks, and the footage just showed up yesterday in both locations.”

Io rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

“Were there cameras in those areas before?”

“Yes.”

“And no sign of Synapse or the blue-haired woman before?”

“No.”

I shrugged. “There you have it. It’s a trap.”

“It’s not a —”

Kori held up a hand to silence Io, which our ‘fearless leader’ did not fucking appreciate. “What do you mean it’s a trap?”

It was my turn to stand up. I guess that was the kind of meeting we were in. “We know that blue-haired bitch has some tech wizard with her, right?”

“We saved Elizabeth Sanders,” Bastille said in her slight French accent.

“What would keep her from getting another?” I asked.

“And maybe she got Omega Man to act as her bodyguard,” Io said snidely. “We don’t have time to speculate about every possible —”

“Would it be hard to hide the camera footage if you knew about the city’s network or if you suspected you were being tracked by someone like Io?” I addressed my question to Kori, Surya, and Bastille — y’know, the sane team members. “Why would she appear now after weeks of perfect silence?’

“People make mistakes,” Io said.

“This one hasn’t yet. Every time we thought she was making a mistake; she was just setting a trap. This is clearly a trap.”

“You think we should ignore the one good lead we have?” Io asked. “Surya, are you seriously considering —”

Surya held up a glowing finger, and Io fell silent. Not going to lie, it was pretty hot. “Eidolon has a point,” Surya said. “And I, for one, am not interested in being taken advantage of again.” She looked in Bastille’s direction, and the giant blonde blushed and looked at the floor.

Heat rushed through my body at their shame, fear, and obvious arousal.

“What are you suggesting?” Kori asked.

“I think Io’s right,” I said — and it fucking hurt to even pretend it. “We can’t ignore the lead, but we shouldn’t go in guns blazing and get caught again. I suggest we scout ahead and find out if these are credible leads. Baby steps. If we think this isn’t a trap, we regroup and go in as a team, still acting as though it’s a trap.”

The girls were silent as they weighed my words. I knew it might be impossible for them to take me seriously — to think of me as an equal this time. Only Synapse had done that before she got kidnapped. But I didn’t need them to trust or like me. I just needed them to fear failing again.

“Fine,” Io said. “Let’s do that. We should send Kori in as a fly, or I can get some drones and —”

“No, I got it,” I said as I headed for the door. “I’ll start with the penthouse.”

“Try not to get trapped in light,” Io called after me.

I raised a middle finger behind me as I walked out the door. “Just send me the address.”

After cutting the security camera feed, I watched from the shadows as the two redheaded twins stepped out of the penthouse and into the elevator. As soon as the door closed, they sagged against the wall with what looked like complete exhaustion. Despite their perfect looks, there was sweat and smudged makeup that made it clear that they’d just been fucked good and hard. I was just about to turn away from them and head deeper into the penthouse — deeper into the lair of the blue-haired woman — when they started kissing each other.

At first, it was a gentle kiss. Like two lovers who have been staring into each other’s eyes too long and don’t care if they’re in public, it’s just one quick peck before they part for the day. But that spark started an inferno inside their bodies, as the quick peck became a second one. And a third. They held each other’s faces and kissed as though each kiss was wrong, as though it was too shallow. As though they were drowning until they found the perfect kiss.

Well, fuck me sideways.

I could have stayed and watched the two flawless redheads makeout for the rest of my life. And part of me wanted to. The part of me that related to every sane person on the planet. If you ever get a chance to watch two hot twins makeout, you take it. But still, there was work to do on the other side of that elevator. Work and destiny.

One way or the other, I was going to step beyond the Gray today. I could either end up like one of these redheads, or the blue-haired woman was going to teach me what she had to offer. She was going to show me how she did it. I needed to know not just how to shut people off and numb their bodies — that was a cute trick, but let’s be honest, I wasn’t interested in turning people off. But she was going to teach me how to get what I wanted from them. From anyone. Getting Perla desperate to fuck me was easy. I had something she wanted, something she needed. It was like being able to withhold air from someone with a careless thought. But Perla was a special case — one that the blue-haired woman engineered for me. How could I recreate that with anyone I wanted?

How could I do it with Io?

I was about to step through the Gray and into the penthouse when one of the redheads sank to her knees while her sister casually wrapped a hand around her throat. But instead of crying out in pain or fear, the submissive sister wasted the little air left to her on a moan. I was just wondering if I should step in and save the bimbo sister — I know, hero work is a hard habit to break — when the redhead looming over her seemed to transform. She — let’s call her Domme for now — let go of Sub’s throat, and in the blink of an eye slapped the bejeezus out of her sister. Sub moaned instead of cried out, and Domme laughed at her. Hell, I was about to laugh at the moron when Domme’s face turned into a mask of rage.

“You fucking, cunt,” Domme said to her sister (such sisterly love is moving, honestly. Moving). Then she spat on her sister’s face as though she’d done it a hundred times. And Sub took it like she’d been spat on every day of her life. Her face was serene as her twin smeared the spit all over her face before smacking her again.

I was just about to reach between my legs when the elevator dinged. Domme pulled Sub up to her feet by her hair, and Sub moaned again instead of the natural human instinct to cry out in pain. The two were in ripped and ruined clothes, so the nice men at the front desk and door stopped to try and help them before letting them out on the street — which I thought was both nice and condescending as hell.

I watched, bemused and horny, as the elevator doors closed with me inside, lurking in the shadows. I pressed the button to send it back to the penthouse. Clearly the blue-haired woman had been busy — the kind of busy I wanted to be.

The penthouse itself looked like I hoped — fancy but ruined from a recent BDSM orgy of some kind. There were whips, cuffs, ropes, strap-ons, vibrators, dildos, and a dozen other toys I’d never seen before and could only imagine their purpose. It looked like every surface had been fucked on with scratches and stains. There had also been a lot of booze consumed. And I mean a lot. Empty bottles littered the different rooms as the party moved from surface to surface. Even the huge windows overlooking the city were smeared with fingerprints and other liquids I couldn’t identify.

But there weren’t any people.

I stayed in the shadows and looked before I moved through the Gray. I doubt the blue-haired woman knew I was coming with enough time to prepare another light trap for me, but with her powers, I could assume she sensed the presence of my mind. That was fine. I didn’t need to get the jump on her; I just wanted to talk to her after all. I just needed to make sure she didn’t get the jump on me.

Someone had set up a bed in what I could best describe as the living room — assuming penthouse owners used quaint names for rooms like us poor normal people. There was a setup of several monitors near the bed which I hoped meant there was some kinky recording of whatever the hell happened here. I wondered if the twins were always like that. As nice as it may be to fantasize about, it’s hard to believe that there are real twins in the world that love fucking each other. Even harder to believe that one loves to be hurt and spat on while the other equally loves hurting people and spitting on them. And after seeing what the blue-haired woman had done to Surya and Bastille, I could believe she had revised them to be the kinkier version of themselves. Hell, that was the reason I was here, right? I wanted to know how to make those edits, whether it was to alter them altogether or to make slight revisions to unleash the submissive slut hidden inside each human skull.

Because maybe Surya and Bastille were always this way.

Because I know deep down that the blue-haired woman didn’t do anything to me. I knew — and if she could read minds, then she knew — that I was always like this. I just didn’t see the way. I hated the idea of abusing my power. But what difference would that be from Io using her fame to get wealth or Kori using her powers to be every lover’s fantasy? We all used our powers to get what we wanted — well, except for Synapse.

Holy fuck, what was the blue-haired woman going to do to Synapse?

I shook my head. It didn’t matter. If I found the blue-haired woman and she took me in — which was already assuming a lot — maybe I could convince her to let Synapse go. Or maybe Synapse would join me. No. That would never work. Synapse was a good girl. She was incorruptible.

I was still snuggled into the shadows as I moved through the penthouse. I had grown accustomed to the Gray now that I spent hours at a time there. I had learned that it didn’t lack color, it just had too many shades. Billions of them. I could slowly differentiate that the redheads had red hair, but it still looked mostly gray to me. That was fine. It was a small price to pay for the feeling the Gray brought with it these days. Instead of feeling like a great cost I was paying to step through shadows, it felt like the one place I was untouchable. It was my realm, and here I was a goddess.

I held my breath before I stepped into a new room. My heart rate went crazy at the thought that any room could be a trap, but more importantly, any room could hold the blue-haired woman. I imagined her lounging on some expensive sofa with a drink in her hands, crowned in shadows. She would be staring at the exact spot I was hiding, totally immune to my cloaking. I imagined her amusement at my obsession, my care, and my hunt. She wouldn’t be flattered. I wouldn’t impress her. She would laugh, and then … and then …

Then would she break me?

If I had no chance against her by myself, what else could possibly happen? Did I seriously think she would help me? Train me? No. She wouldn’t even fuck me. She didn’t back at her base with Hauzer. She trapped me, made me watch, and left me. Why wouldn’t she do that again?

I was broken from my reverie of self-doubt by the sound of someone crying. I hovered outside the door of one of the bedrooms, listening. It sounded like one person. Female. But she wasn’t wailing. It was a simple whimper, and she was moving things around. I think. Packing? There was the occasional light thud of something heavy being moved accompanied with the subtle clink of smaller things colliding. Whoever it was, she wasn’t a careful packer. I listened for more bodies, more feet, more voices, but I got nothing. And I couldn’t imagine the blue-haired woman packing her base of operations while weeping, so I could probably risk peeking through the wall via the Gray.

What I saw caught my breath. It was a woman in her late twenties with strawberry blonde hair that was in total disarray. She had thick circular glasses that were broken, and she was moving through the room, packing it up, while in exquisite and ripped white lace lingerie. Her stockings were riddled with holes. Her lace panties were ripped to shreds and dangling from useless garters. One of the straps of her bralette was gone, and one of her perky tits was hanging out, but she didn’t seem to notice. Didn’t seem to care. She was moving pieces of machinery — what looked like computer tech — into boxes and loading them up.

I stepped into the room but stayed in the Gray. Once I was closer, I could see she was covered in marks. Red lines. A bruise on her cheek. Little bite barks along her arms. Several hickies on her neck like a dark red necklace. And before I could think better of anything, the hero instincts in me took over and I was slinking out of the darkness and opening my stupid mouth.

“Are you alright?” I asked, holding up my hands to try and show her I meant her no harm.

“Holy shit!” she said as she stepped back, dropping a box that was in her hands onto her toe. “Fuck!” she roared and hopped backwards, sitting on the bed, and holding her foot. So much for not startling her. “Jesus. Fucking. Ow.” She hissed and rocked back and forth. Instead of peeling off her stocking to look at her foot, she just ripped it some more until her right foot was free.

“Fuck. I’m sorry,” I said, stepping closer. “Let me see.”

My voice seemed to remind her that there was an intruder in her room. She let go of her foot and rolled backwards, falling off the bed and losing her glasses in the process. “What do you want from me?” she said. “What are you —”

“My name is Eidolon.” I gestured to my relatively lame suit and the Aurora Flight badge on my chest. Someone in a PR firm designed it, and then Io helped some people make it more camouflage-y to work with my powers. “I’m a member of —”

“Aurora Flight,” she said. “I know.” She scooped down to pick up her glasses, seeming to compose herself. “You could have knocked, y’know.”

“Um …” I looked back at the rest of the abandoned penthouse destroyed from what I assumed was some rather vigorous fucking. Looking at the dainty girl in front of me, I could guess that she was a participant or victim of some sort.

“Right,” I said. “Is this your penthouse?”

“No.” She picked up the box that had destroyed her toe and placed it back on the bed with the other boxes. “It belongs to a friend.”

“Did this friend do that to you?” I said, pointing to her destroyed clothing.

“No,” she said without shame or embarrassment. Since I walked in, she made no effort to cover her body. She was totally unashamed — which to me reeked of the blue-haired woman.

“Are you aware that this is the suspected lair of a powerful super we’ve been hunting?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I watched her face as she continued packing before saying, “Woman. Blue-hair. Likes leather. And mind games. And sex.”

Her face betrayed nothing, but she stopped packing and stared at me, letting me read her entire face. She was confident. Or well trained. Or totally fucking brainwashed.

“There’s no one here matching that description,” she said.

“We have camera footage that says she was here in the last 24 hours.” I pointed around the penthouse. “Maybe she’s the one that made this mess?”

The woman shook her head. “No. This wasn’t her.”

“Different friends?” I said. “Redheaded twins, maybe?”

This one caught her off guard, and she couldn’t hide her surprise. Not surprised at what I was saying but surprised at what I knew.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Do you have a warrant?” She stepped backwards, and I stepped closer. All at once, my fear and nerves fled me. She was the one who was scared. She was the one who should be. I had played this role before with Perla. This woman was going to dodge my questions, but she had no idea who she was dealing with.

I had to show her.

I stepped through the shadows and appeared behind her. She stepped forward, looking for me. “I’m not a cop,” I said. She jumped and spun, clutching her heart as the fear seized her. For a moment, I wished I were Synapse and able to pick up on her terror, to lick at the pool of it like a cat.

I stepped through the shadows once more to another corner of the room. “And I don’t have to play by their rules.” The woman spun, but I stepped through the shadows again, appearing behind her once more. “So how about we cut the bullshit?”

She spun once more, and this time I stayed in place. But I let my body sink into the Gray, leaving only my eyes visible in the growing darkness. “What’s your name?”

She staggered back and fell on the bed. “G-G-Gretchen.”

“Hello, G-G-Gretchen,” I mocked, stepping closer to her and out of the shadows. “I am Eidolon of Aurora Flight. The bitch we’re looking for captured one of our members. And you can either answer my questions, or I can call in the rest of the team. And the FBI. And half the supers in the city that are looking for my friend, Synapse.”

“I don’t know anything.” She looked back at the doors as though she was expecting someone to appear there. Instinct took over, and I stepped into the shadows, ready to disappear out of the penthouse entirely. The sun was setting. Soon the world would be my playground.

“Bullshit,” I said. My disembodied voice filled the room, and Gretchen looked around for some sign of me, any sign. All she got was shadows.

“You just decided to have an abusive orgy?”

“I …” Her cheeks flushed a deeper shade of gray, which I knew was red. “I can do that if I want.”

“Of course you can. And the blue-haired woman watched? Or did she just orchestrate it and leave?”

“Please,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I appeared in front of her and grabbed her jaw. She didn’t kick me off, but I was ready for it. Instead, her eyes went wide as what must have looked like a ghost was done with her bullshit. “Don’t fucking lie to me,” I said. I ripped the other strap of her bralette. “Who did this to you?”

It wasn’t an act. I didn’t care about some brainless bimbo. I didn’t care about the incestuous twins. It was all hot, but none of it mattered. They were just like Perla, just more bodies left in the blue-haired woman’s wake. And I was close. Closer than ever. Perla was months behind the blue-haired woman, but Gretchen must have just seen her. No more than a day ago. She had the answers I needed, and I had to act on them quickly. Io and the team would be behind me. I didn’t have time for lies.

“The twins!” she shrieked. “We were supposed to have fun, and then the twins went — well one of them — went dark and psycho and —”

“The blue-haired woman made her do it.”

“No!” She looked away and bit her lip. “Well, sort of. It was —”

My hand moved lower, wrapping around Gretchen’s throat. “Where is she?”

But the fear in Gretchen’s face disappeared instantaneously. She seemed to almost lean into my hand, to be curling into it, begging for it. I had seen it before.

Perla.

“What did she do to you?” I said, my voice softening. My free hand reached between Gretchen’s legs. “Did she make you —”

Gretchen moaned and pressed her pussy against my hand.

“Please squeeze,” she said. “Please.”

“You can feel this?” I said, letting my fingers glide along the lips of her pussy. She was fucking soaked.

“Mmmmm,” Gretchen said. “Mhmm.”

“And this?” I let one finger slip between the folds and found her swollen clit quickly.

“Mhmm. Oh fuck. Yes.”

“You want me to fuck you like the twins did?”

Her eyes opened. “Harder than them.” There was both certainty and desperation in her voice. Again, it reminded me of Perla. “You can do things they never could, touch me in places they couldn’t reach.”

“Like your orgasm? Did the blue-haired woman take away your orgasm?”

Gretchen laughed and looked away from me. Her hips kept pulsing, grinding her pussy against my hand, but I pulled it away. I released her throat. She whimpered but kept slithering over the messy bed, offering her body.

I stepped backwards. This was off. This was the trap. It wasn’t light this time. It was Gretchen. She flipped too quickly. This wasn’t right. I looked to the door, expecting to find the blue-haired woman there, but there was nothing. I stepped through the shadow and quickly checked all over the penthouse without being circumspect. Gretchen cried out at my absence, but I didn’t have time for it. Everywhere the blue-haired woman went, she left sex-crazed bimbos. I wasted too much time with Perla. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again with Gretchen.

“Please,” she cried out. “Come back! I promise I’ll make you feel good.”

“I have no doubt,” I muttered. I could fuck her like Perla, but neither of them was the ones I wanted. They were practice at best, but they should have been steppingstones to the blue-haired woman. But they were useless. All useless.

I stepped back into the bedroom. Gretchen had tossed everything off the bed and was spread waiting for me, idly teasing her clit with one hand and an exposed tit with another. “Show me the shadow,” she said as seductively as possible.

“What did she do to you?” I asked. “She didn’t shut off your pussy or orgasm, though she’s done that to other girls.”

Gretchen bit her lip and nodded. “She wouldn’t do that to me. I’m her favorite.” She stopped touching herself. “Or at least I used to be.”

“She doesn’t need you anymore?’

Gretchen shook her head. The pain on her face was genuine, but I didn’t have time to give a fuck. I’m sure her decades of therapy will be filled with empathy. I was in a rush.

“What did she do to you?” I asked again.

Gretchen tapped her brain. “It’s all locked up in here.”

“Stop fucking around.” I clenched my fists and looked at the door again. It felt like she was stalling for time, keeping me here for some trap. “I don’t have time.”

“How about you fuck it out of me?” she said with a coy smile.

I snarled and stepped into the Gray. But this time I didn’t step past her, to her, or around her. This time I stepped through her. Into her. It was like reaching into the Gray inside of Perla, of finding the spaces between her neurons and cutting them away or playing them like the strings of a harp. But the Gray space wasn’t between Gretchen’s legs.

It was between her ears.

I hadn’t thought of it before, but in all my time in the Gray, I never saw by light. There was no light in the Gray. There was a kind of glow, a kind of pale reflection like starlight compared to sunlight. But it wasn’t the full spectrum. Things bled and faded, they lost their luster and polish. But not in Gretchen’s mind. Here the gray was full of light, like moonlight to the typical starlight. It was bright and pale, rich and glowing. It was delightful.

How had I not seen it?

Little traces of the light rushed through Gretchen’s body, and I assumed they were more nerve endings. Messages from the brain like cars on a highway at night from the height of an airplane. Just dots rushing back and forth. But if the body was a highway, the brain was a city. It was a beacon against the darkness. I froze as I marveled at it. Compared to the walls around us, the lifeless and dead clothing ripped on Gretchen’s body, even the warm light of the lamps that had turned to a dead and grim shadow, Gretchen’s mind was a full moon on a clear and cool night. It was something to navigate by, something to take me home.

I had never stepped through or into a human mind. Why would I try? Would that kill them? Leave them braindead? Hurt them? For years, I thought my powers made me a monster, and people treated me that way. No one likes a girl that lives in the shadows, that skulks in the background, that lurks in the night. Becoming a superhero was a chance to redeem myself, to say that maybe the girl that goes bump in the night could be a defender instead of a thief, an assassin, or worse. The girl cloaked in darkness could be a hero, and what hero would risk hurting innocents just to test her powers?

But I wasn’t a hero anymore.

And I wasn’t good.

And I wasn’t innocent.

The three thoughts came in quick succession. They were neutral and obvious, as easy to think as ‘Today is Tuesday.’ Because I had no problem sifting through the bright lights of Gretchen’s mind. Even if it hurt her — if it killed her. It didn’t matter. I had to know what I could do, what I was capable of. Gretchen was just the new Perla. They were all a means to an end. I was one step closer to the blue-haired woman, though maybe … maybe …

Maybe I didn’t need the blue-haired woman.

Maybe I could find all the lights in Io’s mind. Maybe the evil I wanted the blue-haired woman to unleash, the permission I needed to let out the bubbling rage eating me alive, the confidence to fuck Io the way the blue-haired woman fucked Kori. Maybe I had it all along. Maybe all I needed was power — the power of the Gray matter lurking in each human mind. And maybe for power all I needed was practice.

“Hello practice,” I said with a smile as my body materialized. I cupped Gretchen’s bruised cheek. She flinched away from me, but I didn’t take my hand away. I was going to have her.

“Wh-wh-what was that?”

“Tell me, Gretchen.” I felt my smile turn predatory, but I wasn’t afraid to scare people anymore. And as Gretchen shivered against my cheek, I didn’t think she minded being terrified of me. “What do you know about gray matter?”

Her mind was as ruined as Perla’s pussy. It was like finding stand-still traffic in city streets, and most cars were forced to take side alleys and back ways to try to get from Point A to Point B. Or to go back to the harp analogy, every string was tangled and ruined. I spent almost an hour trying to untangle them, but I was getting impatient.

And Gretchen’s arousal wasn’t helping.

That street in her mind was wide open. No traffic whatsoever. No lights. No turns. Nothing. It was as though she could become horny easier than producing an original thought. Like she would know she was horny faster than she felt pain or hunger. Which, to the blue-haired woman’s credit (Soma, between the tramp-stamp tattoo Gretchen had and her constant blathering, I had learned the blue-haired woman was named Soma), wasn’t a bad idea. Sounds fun. But then again, I doubt Soma had Gretchen crawling all over her lap and desperately trying to lick her pussy while she concentrated. If stepping in and out of the Gray repeatedly wasn’t so exhausting, I’d have slapped Gretchen away. In fact, it only occurred to me after forty-five minutes that I could have — and should have — just tied the bitch up. But I’ll have to remember that next time I do brain surgery in the Immaterial Realm.

“She says it makes it so Synapse can’t sense me or manipulate my senses,” Gretchen said.

I didn’t say anything back. I was close to getting the knot undone. I wasn’t sure what I would want to do with Gretchen after that — I still had so much to learn — but at least I could figure out what change that evoked.

“But I guess she could have made other revisions,” she said. “She does that a lot with her puppets.”

Puppets? Jesus, fuck. I needed someone to remind me later that I wasn’t going to refer to my bitches as thralls, puppets, or minions. Bunch of goddamn psychopaths. How could they be smart enough to make these crazy brain knots but too stupid to be anything but melodramatic and vain thespians at the end of the day. I mean, the amount of work put into —

“Fuck,” I said as I suddenly became solid and slipped out of the Gray. I had cut the wire. I didn’t think I could do that, but Gretchen was getting on my nerves and —

Fuck.

“What are you feeling?” I asked.

Gretchen looked up at me. “Huh?”

“Did I just hurt you?”

Gretchen scrunched up her face. Without her broken glasses, she had an adorable face — and her button nose kinda drove me crazy. Her strawberry-blonde hair flopped back and forth as she shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Something was wrong. Her voice was high and squeaky, like she was doing a shitty valley-girl impersonation.

“I just cut something in your brain,” I said. “Or the Gray version of your brain. The immaterial part of it.”

“Huh?”

“Oh fuck. Um …” I looked around the room, trying to find some sort of reference material for a test. “Who wrote MacBeth?”

“What?” Gretchen cocked her head to one side in a definitely moronic and helpless way. And while she didn’t strike me as the paragon of intelligence before, it was definitely not a good sign that she was struggling to string sentences together.

“Do you remember your name?”

She giggled. “I’m Gretchen. Though you can call me Gretch.”

“Yeah, definitely not doing that.” I ran my hands through my hair. “Fuck. Do you remember Soma?”

“Who?” Gretchen asked. “What’s your name again, babe?” She giggled. “Sorry. It’s all just in one ear and out another. I can’t keep anything in there.”

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Hang on.” I stepped in the Gray and back into her brain. Almost half the lights had gone out in the city. I had cut away too much. Far too much. I saw the limp strands of her mind. Memories. Desires. Knowledge. People. Fuck. Personality? Goddamn it. Was she Gretch now? Jesus. What the fuck had I done?

I reached for two broken strands and tried to tie them back together, forming a little knot with my immaterial fingers. When that did nothing, I knew I needed to get the fuck out of here. I would let the police find Gretch and ask their questions, and I could tell Aurora Flight that there was only some bimbo that Soma had brainfucked and left in the penthouse. Right. Easiest cover story ever.

But then there was a pulse of light between the two re-connected strands. It wasn’t a light. It didn’t really glow. But it was something like the lights passing through Gretchen’s body, the cars on the highway from high above.

I stepped out of the Gray. Gretchen was still giving me her moronic face, but I didn’t think I was going to fix everything with one lazy square knot. “Gretchen?” I said. “How are you feeling?”

“Me?” she said. Her voice was deeper. It wasn’t the vapid and broken voice she’d used before. It wasn’t girly in the slightest. It was thick and husky. It was a woman, a grown woman. My body shivered at the sound of her voice. “I feel great, love. What’s your name?”

“Holy shit,” I whispered. I stepped in the Gray and untied the knot. I stepped out and her voice had returned to the annoying bimbo voice. I stepped back into the Gray and tied the knot again. Stepped out, and she had the sexy and husky voice again.

“Holy fucking shit,” I said to myself. “I did that.”

“Did what?” Gretchen got closer — and by that, I mean she practically crawled into my lap. She put her hand on my thigh — very high up my inner thigh. “Did you just help me with something?”

“Uh … yeah,” I said.

Her hand moved from my upper thigh to between my legs. I didn’t fight her. I didn’t resist. And she didn’t look away. Her eyes bored into me, hungry and mature. It was like I’d aged her ten years and gave her horny Milf energy. All at once she was the older woman wanting to teach me the ways of a woman’s body. And I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t give a flying fuck about lights or brain damage or even Soma. None of it mattered. She licked her lips and —

I kissed her. I don’t know why. Something about the voice. It was driving me crazy. And her hand on my crotch. And the horny highway I knew that was in her mind. She could get turned on easier than remember my name. And holy fucking shit did I love that.

Gretchen (Gretch? It was growing on me) shoved her tongue down my throat, moaning as she melted into me like a cheap whore. My first thought was that she needed a gentler touch, but then my second thought was that I could give her a gentler touch. I had that power. I could edit her. Revise her. It would take forever. Trial and error. Practice. Yes. More practice. And she could always end up braindead, but I could find someone else. Perla was still waiting for me. Yes. Anyone. I could get them and practice until I was ready for Io.

Practice made perfect, after all.

I broke the kiss. “You sure you don’t remember me, love?”

Gretch shook her head and licked her lips slightly. She looked so clueless. It made me want to bite her ear, to bend her over and make her moan, make her scream. God, I could do so many things with her.

What would Io look like with that vapid face? All that intelligence and nowhere for her snobby thoughts to go? God, I wondered if I could make it so she knew how stupid she was, so she could feel trapped behind her eyes and be unable to make her body do anything but give me pouty lips and slutty kisses.

“My name is ’Lon,” I said. “I’m your girlfriend.” I pretended to look dejected but didn’t waste too much energy in the performance. I was, after all, dealing with a moron. “You’ve been dealing with some memory problems, and we brought you here to get some treatment. But I guess it didn’t work.”

Gretch didn’t look sad. She just looked confused, like I was using words far beyond her vocabulary. You know, big words like ‘treatment.’

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you out of here. We’re staying at a hotel while you get help.”

I stood up, and Gretchen went with me, latching onto my arm. “Do you know where your clothes are?” She didn’t. Of course, she didn’t. We looked around for a while and found some skinny jeans and a t-shirt. There was a white lab coat, but I told her it belonged to a doctor. It probably did.

As we worked, I explained to Gretch that she had an accident at work that gave her a brain injury (I had to use exceedingly small words). That she lost her job and had one of her forgetting episodes. It happens from time to time, and when it does, it’s my job to remind her of who she is. I take care of her. I think she bought it. It didn’t really matter. She tried several times to undress and fuck me, and while I let her finger me to one orgasm before we left, I didn’t give in the following three times she begged to lick my cunt.

When we got off the elevator, there was shouting in the lobby. The doorman was talking to a police officer and the red-headed twins were sitting in handcuffs. One was looking pouty, but the other one seemed to be having an orgasmic time with the restraints though her hair was soaked for some reason.

“What’s going on, officers?” I said. I sat Gretch down away from the scary people that talked in full sentences and made sure that my Aurora Flight patch was on clear display in case my superhero suit didn’t give me away.

The doorman explained that the twins had asked to use a bathroom while they waited for their ride. But instead of using the bathroom, they were fucking wildly while one twin was practically drowning the other one. They said they both consented, and when the doorman tried to separate them, the stronger twin attacked him. He called the cops.

“I’m just getting his statement,” the officer said while pointing to the doorman, “before taking these girls to the station.”

“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” I said.

“Oh really?” The officer said. “And why not?”

I pointed to my Aurora Flight badge. “You’re about to get a visit from the rest of Aurora Flight. There was a crime upstairs in one of the penthouses. You should see the place. Looks like a wreck. These three,” I said pointing to all the women, “are witnesses. We need to speak with them.”

The officer hesitated, and before I thought better of it, I stepped into the Gray and swiped wildly at the bright lights in his mind. I stepped back out in time to see him stagger backwards, a look of confusion replacing his former look of suspicion. It took five minutes of bullshit to tell him to sit down, that he was having some kind of stroke, and send the doorman to call for an ambulance. The whole time, I knew I should have felt awful about it. But all I could feel was rage. Rage that this asshole wasn’t respecting me as a member of Aurora Flight even though I wasn’t Bastille, Surya, or Io. Rage that he was wasting my time. Rage that I had saved more lives in a week than he had in a month. And yet he couldn’t believe me. He couldn’t listen.

Fuck him.

And so, I didn’t feel bad about doing the same to the doorman when he came back so he could forget we were ever there. Didn’t feel bad about taking the keys and freeing the redheads. And when they resisted coming with me and asked too many questions, I didn’t feel bad about cutting the threads in their minds either. I was more careful with them. I cut fewer lines, and simply reminded them that Soma wanted them to come with me. They recognized Gretch, and soon the three of them were following me out the door. And though I didn’t know where we were going, I knew for the first time in a long time what I was doing. I was taking charge. No Aurora Flight. No Soma. No one but me. And for now, that meant I needed these girls to come pay for some hotel room for the four of us.

Because I needed more practice.