The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

26.

Anita was sleepwalking.

She strolled nude down the halls and through the desks of Danziger Associates with a dreamlike glow of well-being. The women who worked at Danziger looked up from their desks, smiled from doorways, passed in corridors, none of them wondering why their old colleague “Amelia” was wandering everywhere in nothing but a collar.

Anita felt calm.

She was completely open, feeling her body loosen as it imprinted the oddest details: Here was the fire exit. That hallway reached the smaller elevator bay. This file room had a vent too small for anyone to crawl through. Those windows didn’t open onto the decorative balcony.

Anita knew she’d remember.

Part of her knew she was deeply hypnotized now, watching a video that someone else had taken as they wandered all through Danziger. A camcorder’ s-eye-view of Danziger’s offices and lounges and storage areas, with a bright voiceover describing everything and identifying all the women on staff as the videographer greeted everyone, from dour Livvy Danziger herself on down to sunny Laurie at the reception desk.

At one point, the camera peered at a couple of group shots on a lounge wall from what looked liked a softball league, and refocused on one, then another woman. “Becky, and Ann—well ‘Ann Arbor’ if you ask her, Michigan blue and gold all the way—and that’s Sally. They’re all out today, or we would have met them also, but they’re part of Danziger, too.” Anita recognized the voice of the woman filming them all.

Carly, her ex-roommate. The one who’d tried to find her help as she fled from mind controllers, and had made the horrible mistake of calling the Oasis Center to do it. Even in trance, Anita shook with remembered guilt, but the depth of her trance swallowed it up and soothed her to acceptance.

Fingers snapped in front of her face.

She opened her eyes, and stared into gold-flecked gray eyes. A tall woman in a black leotard stared coldly at her, and Anita tensed, remembering the shock of seeing Kit dressed as Mistress’ mindless janissary for the first time—the night Valerie had taken them all. Anita saw the same implacable glare that she’d once mistaken for shock. It scared her even as it made her breasts tingle, but she knew they were both Mistress’ property. And Joyce, Mistress’ other slave whom she served and loved, had commanded her.

Seeing Kit now, Anita felt a new rush of desire to kneel at her feet and beg to attend her, to lick her, to be a whore serving this warrior, the robotic girl who’d just entranced her.

But she wore the same leotard Kit wore, standing at attention in front of her. She was like Kit, one of Mistress’ warriors. Not quite—Kit was her Controller. She must obey Kit. With her role clear now, her awareness expanded.

They were here. It was time.

The underground garage was the lowest parking level under 8100, the building where Danziger Associates occupied two floors with a view.

Anita remembered bits and pieces of the trip back to this city, sitting next to Joyce in the shuttle van. Joyce had kept her hypnotized her for most of it, to rest her.

Now, she was back. Where Carly had lost her will.

Smelling the exhaust and oil in the garage, Anita was calm. She realized that in the weeks she’d spent as Joyce’s pet, they must have been training Carly in place, using her to learn all they could about how Danziger was laid out. She wondered whose idea it was to have Carly convince Livvy to let her do an amateur documentary.

Then she thought about Mistress, and stopped wondering.

She blinked. Every slave here had seen the tape several times in trance, and they could each have found their way around both floors of Danziger and the rest of 8100 . . . in their sleep. Kit had just sent her through the training dream once more to reinforce her programming as they waited to be sent up, since she wasn’t the drone the others were.

Anita was calm, and she could summon the sensation of Joyce’s touch, Joyce’ s voice, her smiling approval. But she still saw the women she’d worked with grinning up at Carly’s camcorder, joking with her, playfully reciting their names and jobs.

Etching their faces and identities onto the minds of Mistress’ unblinking robots, who would know whom to look for and where. Who would know where they could hide.

Anita’s etched mind knew now, too.

They were up there now, at least the diehards who’d stayed on after Livvy had ordered everyone to “Go home—it’s nine-thirty, for god’s sake.” They didn’t know what was coming for them. Or that their pretty workmate Carly with the camcorder had tagged them all like lambs for shearing.

Anita was going to help shear their minds from them as they . . .

Joyce wants me to do well, Anita told herself. I will do well for her. I love her and I belong to her. Joyce was doing something else for this operation, and had bidden her to obey Kit as Controller. Anita still felt a bit afraid of the powerful, empty-eyed girl, but her need to make Joyce proud was stronger.

More than that—almost frighteningly more than that—was the heat she felt at being like the other slaves. Dressed like them, focused on them, one with them. She fancied that any too-independent thought of hers would evaporate from the sheer force of their sameness. She dampened, wondering if she wanted to try.

They waited in a closed-off area of the garage. This late in the day most of the tenants of 8100 had left, so they had this level to themselves and there was no one to remark on a dozen blank-eyed slave women dressed identically in leotards and boots, standing motionless. God. They were so still. Were their minds as blank as their faces, or were they rigid but orgasmic inside?

And with them, Anita thought, was one pet who might just look dazed.

But Anita was still getting high on how her costume made her feel, and if she’d felt merely dangerous seeing herself alone in the mirror that first time, she felt deliciously lethal when she stood with the rest.

She was one of Mistress’ weapons, and the way that knowledge buzzed in her pussy was blurring all the wistfulness about friends. She still knew, somewhere, that what her power meant was someone else’s fear, and she still knew what that fear meant in turn, but it was just too easy to relax and enjoy.

They said fascism was just . . . bad sex, she thought giddily. But it’s not . . . bad . . .

“Pet.” Kit spoke.

“Yes, Controller.” Anita stiffened, tightened, let Kit’s stare pierce her. “How may I obey you?”

She took heart, as she had after the conditioning session before they’d left for the intercity trip, from the bright look her improvised slave courtesy drew from Sheila, who stood beside Kit wearing a headset. Sheila still looked as sweetly maniacal as she had then.

Kit held out a cell phone. “Activate the other slave.”

“Yes, Controller.” Anita accepted the phone, sensing more hypnotically-implanted phrases waiting to rise from her mind, relaxing this time to let them access her. Perversely finding comfort in leaving her eyes on Kit’s, she hit the speed-dial without looking at it.

It picked up on half a ring. “Outreach, this is Carly, talk to me.”

“Hello, Carly.” Anita shivered, but felt her thighs stroke each other and let Kit’s stare cool them. “It’s Amelia.”

“Amelia? What happened to you? Are you—do you want to talk to Livvy? She—”

“Total obedience now, Carly.” Words from the briefing trance came into her head now.

As the command hit Carly’s mind, Carly sighed, and the soft bedroom sound in her ear almost sent Anita to her knees.

Kit’s cold stare kept her upright. “Time to obey the primary program, Carly. Your own controller is coming; you will obey automatically until she triggers you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Carly whispered blissfully. “i understand and obey. Does my programming need updates?”

“No, Carly. All is as Mistress wants it to be. Go and obey.”

Carly thanked her and hung up and she gave the phone back to Kit, feeling emptier now that she’d said her own programmed piece. She didn’t wonder why they’d had her do it. She just relaxed and let the memory of obedience spread over her body, warming it.

She grasped her inducer. Joyce had taught her how to use it, standing behind her and reaching to move her arms as she held it, teaching her the balance, guiding her fingers to the controls. Anita had enjoyed Joyce vertically spooning against her, but her sense of duty (and her fear) had kept her concentrating, not distracted by the sound or feel of Joyce’s whisper from the instruction it bore. She remembered suddenly feeling like a pioneer daughter learning to shoot from her mother when there was no one else. Joyce . . .

They waited.

Anita stood blankly, imagining Joyce’s hand on her neck . . . lost herself . . .

Anita felt calm, and very obedient.

. . . Kit said, “Now.” The slaves turned as one and the movement drew Anita into a graceful pivot. One of the slaves stared up at Kit and then walked stiffly away, and they all stepped through the echoing garage after her to the freight elevator. As each slave walked in she spun to face out. Anita turned as the rest had done, feeling the press of lycra above and skin below, breathing hard.

Next to Kit, Sheila stiffened, and Anita saw her eyes droop closed as a light came on, in the headset. She opened her eyes, staring ahead, and began to move her lips. Anita saw Kit begin to do the same, and the whisper made its way across the packed slavewomen.

“i obey Mistress. i obey Mistress. i obey Mistress. . . .” Anita listened to it, felt her heart speed up, let it stroke her skin and her thoughts like a quiet draft. She leaned against the breast of the slave behind her, and straightened, feeling the leg of one next to her.

They were both whispering. Both obedient. The soft, insistent chant called to her. She felt the bodysuit holding her, the weight of the inducer at her belt, the balance of her legs in the boots. She saw the way the other slavewomen stood, dressed like that, hypnotizing themselves more deeply into belonging.

She was in a uniform. She needed to be uniform. She was invincible and vulnerable, an instrument of Mistress’ power and a pawn as weak as these other women, Mistress’ killer robots.

In a little while it would start. The staff, few enough at this hour, would stare at the half-naked intruders, in perplexity or annoyance or even lust. Some few might have the instinct to fear them.

But they’d look, and they’d be looking when the slaves raised their inducers. No one here would have been softened with drugs or had her mind silently tenderized by subliminal voice commands. There’d be screaming and fighting before they fell into trance, and a few would flee.

They’d be followed. Silent brainwashed huntresses would follow escape routes in a maze they now knew better than the terrified quarry. Into meeting rooms, broomclosets, offices, toilet stalls.

Anita thought of the restroom tiles echoing the last lonely cry before that holdout quieted herself, staring stupefied into the light and letting them lead her out.

She didn’t know what to think.

She didn’t think.

“i obey Mistress,” she murmured, and let it carry her. She barely felt the doors close.

27.

Anita and the others were walking briskly across a stone-floored internal lobby halfway up 8100 when she came fully awake again. This was one place where the freight and passenger elevators shared access, and they were transferring for the last ride up to Danziger.

There was a line of people facing one wall, staring into it: security guards with their guns neatly strapped in their forgotten holsters, inches from numb hands, crew from a cleaning company in their coveralls, their carts and tools stacked neatly in a corner.

Two bodysuited girls led a pair of glassy-eyed janitors past Anita toward the end of the line. One girl was murmuring “. . . wall is fascinating. Now that you see it closely you realize you cannot and will not look at anything else or think of anything else. Until . . .”

They looked slack and weak and sadly helpless next to the taut, capable slaves herding them.

She saw other slaves watching doors and the passenger cars, and realized that Mistress must have quite a few of her slaves here. Kit’s party was just the last. Anita felt dark awe at the kind of planning that took—but it made her confident to be one of Mistress’ tools, carrying out the plan.

She forgot what the plan was as she stalked across the stone with the other robots.

Not a lot of traffic in 8100, this late. The building had lost tenants, and one of Livvy’s missions had been installing her protege startups there, but not all of them were local or relocatable. Anita remembered now relaxing on a couch and telling someone this and many other things while familiar lights beguiled her eyes.

“Pet.”

Anita froze, facing forward, finding it easy to come to attention. She turned only her head to face Kit. “Yes, Controller?”

Kit looked at her. “You will be in front. You will induce the target you find in front of you.”

“I obey.” Anita kept herself still, meeting Kit’s gaze, ready to fall into it or go to sleep or anything else her Controller told her to do, and unwilling to move until then.

Kit nodded and they turned to go to the elevator, facing out again. The doors closed.

It rose. Anita’s stomach floated, and her mind floated with it.

Am I the only one in this elevator who’s afraid? The floor lights slid upward. The only one in this building?

The doors opened.

Dear merciful God I’ve landed on Earth again

She saw Danziger Associates.

Normal—what the fuck was she doing here?

She smelled Danziger, the familiar world of toner and computer musk and perfume and microwaved spicy takeout and coffee coffee coffee and she heard Danziger, muted now in the night, the unique sound of the queeping phones and the fluorescents’ hum and the air system and the soft jazz over the speakers that everyone thought everyone else liked

and I’m an alien now

Anita made herself move from the safety of the quiet elevator and the warmth of slave bodies into the normal world of free people she’d lived in before. It hadn’t been the same going to Janine’s, she’d been insulated in the car, then the empty suburban cul de sac, then . . .

She stalked across the tiles of the reception area. It was like coming onstage at the school play and she wished there were even the weak footlights she’d hidden behind then. She heard female voices to the side where the visitors’ chairs and couches were and heard the bored conversation upshift into “What’s this” “performance artists?” “wish I could go around dressed like that” and followed a line in the tiles telling herself They’re not staring at me the others are deploying I will obey

I will obey for you, Joyce, when this is done you’ll be proud of me pleased with me

She raised her eyes to the woman directly in front of her, the one Kit had given her. For a terrible half-breath she imagined it would be Livvy herself, and then she’d just collapse like a fool dressed like a fascistic showgirl . . .

But it wasn’t Livvy. It was pretty Laurie, loyally manning the desk and keeping the late visitors happy, and Anita found herself stepping lighter, swinging her hips and then her arms, smiling down the space between her and the desk that she shrank with each stride. As her right arm swung past her hip she smoothly caught hold of the inducer and brought it up.

The women in the lounge were gingerly joking with the slaves. Too damned polite, she remembered someone saying, in a group meeting long ago. That’ s why we end up brainwashed. Half the time when it starts we’re too damned polite to scream.

Laurie looked at her, her cheerful face clouding under her night-black gamine tangle of hair. Her glance shifted to where the rest of Kit’s women were starting to move toward the doors into the offices, and she seemed to sense something was not just really strange but wrong.

Her desk wasn’t physically in line to block their entry: Livvy wanted a receptionist, she’d said, not an underqualified guard dog. Laurie was trying to figure it out. Anita watched her try to deny her fear, consider calling out to them, reach for the phone. Her nerves kept her smile locked on. It was all she had right now.

Anita’s fingertips found the setting as she swung the inducer up to where her left hand held it too. Mistress’ slaves were blocking the outside lines, but if Laurie called Livvy or someone else, a cellphone . . . she breathed in. Joyce was in there, and she had to support Joyce, even if it meant she had to . . .

Laurie’s concentration was broken as she peered at Anita. She was recognizing her.

“Amelia, is th—”

Anita induced her.

Laurie’s eyes stayed open in the flash and she shuddered but froze where she was, the severed word bleeding away into a soft vanquished sigh. She stared vaguely at Anita as she approached.

Someone screamed from the lounge area and Anita heard things being dropped, inducers humming, someone running and then someone running after her.

I don’t have to look. I have my orders to obey. I don’t have to look.

She looked at the entranced receptionist, and held the inducer where she could look into it. The girl’s gaze fell into it as the slower blinking began to harness the thoughts the faster flicker had snared. “Laurie. Listen carefully. You obey me. You respond when I command you.” She paused.

Laurie’s head moved slightly, dipped in effort or compliance. Her eyes tried to focus.

“I obey,” she whispered in childlike amazement. “I respond.”

“Good,” Anita said, letting the training speak from her mouth. “You will continue to obey until you see the light again. You must obey me or anyone dressed as I am. It makes you feel good to obey, and it makes it hard to think. You like not thinking.”

Anita listened, and felt herself getting wet, as the girl whispered back what was now the deepest truth in her mind, becoming a helpless tool to anyone in Mistress’ livery. Anita felt like a puppet herself and got wetter as she recited her own hypnotically-memorized commands, programming Laurie to keep visitors out, inform Mistress’ command post of any of a list of developments, and reassure anyone who tried calling her with pleas for help that everything was fine.

Making sure to ask where they were.

She stepped away, breathing hard and leaving Laurie to sway dazedly in her chair, blinking as her mind slowly awoke to its new self. Anita knew that Laurie could be deprogrammed from that simple control very easily, and that the compulsions would wear off within days even without that. But none of them had a few days.

At last she looked at the lounge. The party of visiting businesswomen were standing or sitting very still. Kit and another slave were taking the cellphones they were lining up to hand over before a third slave guided them into a conference room just inside the door. Two women there were already stripping.

Kit told two of the hypnotized women to gather up everything here and move it to the conference room. 8100 tenants might wander in; there was no way to keep a cordon inside the ones they’d already established here. But with nothing strange to see, and friendly Laurie to stall or dismiss them, they’d leave before the sentries Kit stationed would have to induce them.

Then Kit led them inside.

Anita realized how great the chaos could be. If every woman in one area was hypnotized before she could escape or call for help, no one in the next would know until the first bootfall, and then the inducers would flare.

Other slaves had come into the suites from other entrances, so Kit and Anita were latecomers, but the sparsely-staffed outer group of desks in this area of Finance held several women standing blankly and two more cowering behind an overturned file cabinet, covering their eyes and pleading while two slaves walked unhurriedly to them.

They passed through the quiet wreckage, toward Research where Anita’s old desk was. There were a cluster of slaves around a closed door, and Sheila whispered to Kit after her headset had blinked.

Kit nodded, and they went through.

Anita almost fell when she followed, seeing the room full of women, staring agape at the bodysuited invaders, everyone—the shocked and the brainwashed—silent. The slaves moved first, programmed to take these women, not play with them. Inducers came up.

Then Anita felt her eye drawn to one of the victims. A dark-haired woman rose from her desk and looked at them all, her gaze pausing at Anita before moving on. She took it in and her fear shifted to something else.

The woman gathered breath for a scream and then looked around at her friends and swallowed her panic. She breathed in again. She spoke loudly and Anita almost cried for the desperate calm in her: “They’re fucking mind controllers, you guys. We have to fight them or we’ll be them. Get something. Anything! It’s not TV! Now!” No one moved.

Anita felt an impulse to run to her and fall at her feet, offering up the inducer and herself. The idea swept over her and passed away; its heat stayed in her.

The dark-haired woman’s calm cracked. ”Now!“ She howled in terrified frustration and grabbed something from her desk to throw.

Her eyes locked with Anita’s.

Anita’s brain and pussy keened to her together. Anita had never seen the woman before, but she knew her.

She was the one who was trying to rally them.

(Wake up!)

Anita induced her.

28.

After that it was carnage.

The room grew quieter very quickly. A lot of the women tried, and thrown staplers and mugs injured one or two of the slaves, who ignored it in their trances. But especially with the potential leader standing slackly and almost crosseyed with the intensity of the induction, it was anticlimactic.

Anita was numb after what she’d done and wanted to stay that way until she could find Joyce and collapse.

But even that worried her now. Was this what made Joyce cry in her sleep? Anita closed her eyes and forced herself to remember Joyce, lovely and awful in her uniform that night, enslaving the friends who’d come to help her. How had she felt inside that robotized shell?

Had it made her this wet?

She opened her eyes to find Kit before her again. She shivered, and realized she wanted to beg the impassive girl for something.

But . . .

She came to attention. It would appease Kit . . . her Controller . . . and if Anita had any selfhood anymore, this was where it lay. Joyce. Please. I’m doing my best.

Kit looked at her, and Anita found herself turning, facing the girl who’d tried to lead the prey, walking to her. The face might have been pretty; it sagged emptily and Anita was beyond noticing. She searched the eyes, but she’d turned off the other woman’s mind too quickly for tears.

Anita put her arm around her, feeling warmer flesh than her own through the hypnotized woman’s clothing, and leaned up to kiss her. “Surrender,” she whispered. “It can be wonderful.” It barely felt like betrayal now.

She stepped back to Kit and resumed attention.

Kit whirled, and Anita saw several figures darting for various doors. Anita’s pain was sweet as she saw her old friends were brave and smart enough to pretend.

Kit’s team swung to track them but otherwise stayed still.

One escapee halted, too far back when she started, induced for real, and mindless before she could get clear of the desks. Two more disappeared past an unguarded door into the darkened hallway to the supply rooms, but Anita saw flashes in the dark and heard a low-voiced command, and in a moment both women walked slowly back. After them came the slaves Kit’s counterparts had stationed further into the halls to pick off anyone who thought an unguarded door was safe.

Then there was a thumping in a corridor where the last four had fled. Anita followed Kit.

The slave there was already pulling herself up the wall, supporting the Danziger employee who slumped over her. Anita knew she was about to wince, shiver, scream, seeing the prey had let herself be hypnotized so her friends could run. She silently thanked Kit for giving her something to do—the Controller’s nod moved her to help pull the induced girl upright. “Stand and wait and obey,” she whispered, and felt the woman straighten.

She held her anyway, enjoying the pliant warmth.

Kit looked past her down the corridor to the turning.

“Pet. Get them.” Kit’s voice got inside her head. Her heart was pounding.

“I obey, Controller.” She trotted down, hearing no one behind her.

She knew this corridor. Past the door where the slave they’d bypassed had come in and locked it behind her, the women were boxed in, with only the restroom at the end of the L to retreat to. Without seeing them, she heard them react to the dead end separately: one swore, one cried out, and one just whimpered.

Knowing from the sound that none of them had thought to hide by the corner to jump her, Anita held the inducer out as she rounded it. The women turned, and one of them, a waifish Gen-X type, screamed quietly. Her name was Sandra, and Anita no longer knew if memory or hypnosis told her that.

Anita slowed her pace, as deliberately as she’d stalked Laurie. Another woman—Gail—fumbled in a purse that Anita hadn’t noticed her carrying and their eyes met as she looked up. Anita thought suddenly Oh shit shit shit a gun and raised the inducer but Gail seemed even more frightened and almost fell through the restroom door. The other two looked even more shocked at her initiative. Sandra, her eyes wide and disbelieving, seemed about to speak, as if to remind Gail she’d just trapped herself.

Anita induced them, watching both women stop and stand slackly, staring emptily toward her. The flickering reflected from their dulled eyes almost captured hers, and again she felt the intoxicating power of hypnotizing someone.

They all stood there for a moment, as the two new slaves awaited orders, and Anita tried to think of some.

Anita thought about Gail, hiding inside the bathroom, having a moment to think about how deep the shit was that she was in. Perhaps to look around at the tasteful lighting, the expensive tile, the spotless porcelain, and think about spending her last moments as a free woman alone in a toilet. It was as Anita had dreamed it. Anita thought about something else.

What was she looking for in her purse?

What Joyce might do, if she were here, escaped Anita. She stared at the entranced women.

She thought of what Mistress might do.

She looked at waifish Sandra and . . . Toni, older and more full-figured. “You obey my commands without question or hesitation.”

“Yes,” they murmured. Anita wondered if Gail could hear her friends quietly surrendering their wills.

She chose Toni, who seemed more compliant. “Toni, you will do something very important for me.” She saw Toni relax, but couldn’t decipher Sandra’s reaction. She felt a new thought come into her mind: what to do with a resistant subject. “Toni, close your eyes until I tell you to open them. You will not hear the sound of my voice until I touch you. Close them now. Sandra, look into the inducer now. Look closely and concentrate.”

Anita felt cold as she saw Sandra’s eyes flutter again, and her relaxed muscles tense randomly, but the other woman could not resist the command for more than a few seconds.

Giving her fifteen seconds at the setting her fingers found on their own, Anita strode toward her. “Kneel now. You will be comfortable. You cannot think about resisting. You cannot think of why you want to resist. You can only think about being obedient. You will begin to say to yourself ‘I am obedient’, over and over, until you hear my voice tell you to stop. Each time you say it, it will be more true than before.”

Sandra was already sinking to her knees, her lips moving, and the sound of her softening whisper almost made Anita stop to take hold of her. She stepped instead to Toni, and put her hand onto the woman’s shoulder.

Joyce . . .

She let herself think about what she was about to do, and realized she could do it, now. There was something she should feel now, something besides arousal and relief, but she couldn’t . . . didn’t dare . . .

I obey Mistress . . .

She whispered, letting her gaze circle the whorls of Toni’s left ear.

“Go into the restroom and help Gail to relax. Ask her to give you her purse and whatever she was taking from it. Lead her out here so that she can be hypnotized and obey.” She squeezed her subject’s shoulder. “Obey now.”

Staring, Toni turned and pushed the door open. Anita stepped back, holding the inducer, trying not to let Sandra’s maddening whisper distract her, letting her stalking horse stalk.

“No! No! Get away! NO!” It wasn’t Toni’s voice.

The screams made Anita jump. Two screams. One was pain, and the other was—worse.

She swallowed and pushed the door open, thinking frantically of where the mirror was, terrified of hypnotizing herself with the reflection of her own inducer with loose prey ready to take her mind.

They were on the floor, whimpering. Toni was curled up fetally with her hands over her face, and Gail was kneeling, leaning against the wall, her purse beside her and a sprayer on the tiles in front of her, crying as she looked at what she’d done to Toni.

She looked up at Anita, shaking her head. Her mascara ran. She made no move toward the sprayer.

Anita left it there, unsure if that was courage or trust or arrogance. She crouched beside Toni and looked at Gail. “Let me,” she said gently. As her knee angled to floor she felt bootleather against her thigh and breathed softly, feeling herself come to a new equilibrium.

She put her hand on Toni’s hip. “Toni. Hear and obey my voice. You do not feel pain. It doesn’t hurt you now.” She felt Toni relax, heard the sobbing taper off, felt the breathing. “Your eyes are injured and they will be tended, but you have no fear.

“You did very well, Toni. Your obedience is pleasing.” She stroked her subject’s hip, listened to Toni’s low happy sound.

She looked up at Gail, who hadn’t moved except to look down at Toni and now looked up at Anita. She settled back and sighed.

Anita was about to ask what the spray was, but didn’t want to know. She looked at Gail, and raised the inducer. She thought of saying something, of the promise she’d given her entranced other self in the office.

She felt a strong desire to crawl across the tiles past Toni and ravish Gail’s mouth, and it was only the discipline of Mistress’ uniform that helped her resist. She realized that in her disarray and moist collapse, Gail looked very much like someone newly and thoroughly fucked.

She found herself thinking of what she could tell Gail once Gail’s mind slept.

Aiming away from reflective surfaces, Anita flashed Gail’s mind into blissful empty sleep.

She reported to her Controller, with the two sighted captives supporting the blinded one, lightheaded with her backward glance at how Toni smiled as she was led.

She remembered to feel relieved when the slave Kit summoned turned out to be a medic.

29.

slave joyce felt odd wearing clothes, though the tailored, short-skirted corporate-slut ensemble Mistress had chosen for her felt like the next best thing to nudity. The choker felt strangely light after her collar.

Olivia Danziger eyed her critically from behind the desk. The trim executive wore a stylish but comfortable pantsuit, and when joyce had arrived for the appointment, her eyes had clearly reflected Cute, but a little old for the Wall Street whore look, aren’t you? slave joyce didn’t know what Danziger had made of her subtle but visible arousal at that. her pitch may not have been doomed, but she knew her own credibility with Danziger was gone.

she felt a pang, like hearing a song she’d once loved turned off on someone else’s radio. Before—a million years ago—joyce would have given her eyeteeth to work for a woman like this. she’d have died before making such a bad impression.

Fortunately, it didn’t matter.

Olivia Danziger’s eyes weren’t quiet as bright, now.

slave joyce smiled up at the girl who refilled their coffee cups, a striking blonde with Delft-blue eyes who looked somewhat like slave sheila. slave carly met her eyes, and coupled with the hypnotically-induced lust in carly’s glance was a mist of submission. carly had been programmed to react obediently to joyce’s image and voice, just as joyce and every slave on her way in now had been conditioned to recognize carly as Mistress’ active tool instead of a target.

slave carly had also been triggered to attend this meeting and ensure Olivia Danziger’s coffee was suitably drugged.

Danziger listened abstractedly as joyce recited the ways her nonexistent employer, DeVelt Human Assets Ltd., could help the female entrepreneurs Danziger Associates fostered and promoted. She might ordinarily have been poker-faced, but the sedatives were robbing her of the ability to conceal the contempt she felt for joyce’s stream of buzzwords. Her plummeting opinion of “Morgan DeVelt” or whoever would employ a cipher like joyce was becoming clearer, too.

Bathing in the scorn and letting the implanted presentation flow thoughtlessly from her lips like a blowjob in reverse, joyce watched Danziger’s eyelids.

Considering Danziger, she thought of Mistress. she recalled something from the days when she’d still watched TV. Ant queens taking over nests by killing the rival queen and mimicking her pheremones, essentially brainwashing the workers.

she thought about Mistress’ proud beautiful head as a shape of sleek black chitin, Her lovely merciless eyes as huge compound jewels.

joyce thought of bowing to Her, helplessly dazed by the thought-blunting scent of Her. Putting her head meekly between Her pincers. Waiting. Praying.

Looking down at the severed head of the Danziger-queen in a pool of her stolen pheremones . . .

Blinking, she looked at the actual Danziger, who looked back at her, drowsy and doomed. The Queen is enslaved. Long live the Queen.

“Excuse me, Joyce.” Danziger closed her eyes for a moment, and her austere features worked as she concentrated, running a hand through her short silver hair. Her smoker’s cough was concise. “I’m still trying to remember . . . your principal, Ms DeVelt? Morgan DeVelt, was it?”

“Yes, Livvy.” joyce spoke slowly and nodded, letting her own eyes droop. “That’s right.” she saw Danziger start to nod herself and then fight the drowsiness. “Morgan DeVelt.”

Danziger peered at her. “DeVelt. De . . . Velt.

“She’s, not, the one with the . . . eyepatch, is she? Because I’m not prepared to . . .”

slave joyce thought for a moment.

Oh.

“No. That’s not Ms DeVelt. No. We have nothing to do with—her.” Mistress isn’t insane. “We have a completely different arrangement for financing . . .”

Danziger was distracted further as carly crossed her smooth nyloned legs. “Carly . . . could you please go and see? . . . If the faxes have come in from LA yet, and if not could you, could you, give them a call and frighten them a little?”

“Of course, Livvy!” slave carly bounced up and left to carry out the order. her briskness must have made Danziger feel even wearier, but joyce could see that carly’s new attitude disturbed her boss more deeply: to become Mistress’ eyes and ears here, she’d volunteered as Danziger’s executive assistant. she’d reported that her wardrobe and manner had drifted closer to something some male executives might want in a secretary but most would be too afraid of litigation to ask for.

joyce barely listened as Danziger started describing disjointedly what her firm did to support woman-owned enterprises.

It helped that carly seemed to blame herself pointlessly for Anita—“Amelia”—going AWOL, and Danziger focused on trying to reassure her that no one else blamed her to rebuke her shift into eye candy.

slave joyce thought about serving a woman who cared that much about how she felt.

Of course, Mistress did care . . .

No. With practiced ease, slave joyce veered from thinking too much about Mistress to considering Danziger as her predecessor as Anita’s mentor. Anita had trusted and served this woman, who’d reached out to protect her. joyce hadn’t chosen that role, but she had it now.

Now, instead of modeling herself on a leader, Anita was emulating a slave.

No! slave joyce closed her eyes, flogging herself for mental carelessness to keep from thinking beyond it, of what that meant for her pet.

Danziger didn’t notice slave joyce’s eyes close. Danziger’s pauses were lengthening.

joyce had left Anita down in the garage, programmed to obey slave kit, and it had felt absurdly like the first day of a new school when she brought . . .

No no no no. slave joyce was suddenly relieved that she was essentially alone in the room now, as Livvy Danziger’s voice slowed and the woman began to stare mesmerized at the cursor on the unfinished e-mail on her screen. Olivia was oblivious.

Mistress tormented her with thoughts like that in the middle of an operation like this because She had confidence in Her power over joyce’s weaknesses, and in Her control of joyce’s strength. Worship and fear warred in joyce’s chained soul. As always, both won. She programmed me to function. i will obey and i will suffer, and Her will shall be done.

The door opened and slave carly stepped noiselessly through. slave joyce nodded to her when she glanced at Danziger. joyce saw past her, to where Danziger’s secretary and an intern sat gazing raptly into pulsating computer screens while the phone lights sparkled with internal calls for help. joyce knew the area where each light’s call originated, and saw that the slave teams under kit and the others were sweeping through the suites without slowing down.

slave carly had patiently collected the number of each cellphone in the entire firm, too, and each of them was receiving calls now, or offline.

Mistress had covered it all, and she was taking Danziger’s firm out from under her before taking her as well.

At that point, of course, a scream found its way through the door carly had just closed and there was some muffled shouting. slave joyce was momentarily afraid: under Mistress’ orders, she and slave carly were the only slaves here who didn’t have inducers, and she didn’t even have a gun.

she relaxed, hearing the noise get louder. slave kit and the other Controllers would secure it all for Mistress. her role, helping carly neutralize Danziger, was completed. What happened to her mattered little. Very little. At least carly’s drugs had put Danziger to sleep . . .

Livvy Danziger’s eyes blinked open and fought for focus, glaring across at slave joyce. She glanced aside at the noise, even as it began to fade as whoever was out there—trying to defend the Queen—carelessly stared into an inducer and stopped wanting to fight.

Livvy dragged herself out of the daze. “What,” she rasped, “the fuck?” She felt with her left hand, slapping drawers clumsily as she struggled with the drug. One slid open. She sat upright, and pointed a blue-metal revolver at joyce.

joyce stood slowly, feeling the gun track her heart. she remembered valerie, charmed out of committing suicide, almost shooting her. Remembered almost wanting that, so soon after . . .

. . . amanda . . .

valerie hadn’t wanted to shoot her then. joyce looked into Livvy Danziger’ s eyes and saw no such compunction now.

Sheer love for the tough old bitch flooded joyce.

That and the sudden blessed promise of death drew her to the surface of the sea of Mistress-worship she floated in, and she found forbidden thoughts crowding into her head.

she waited to die, wondering if a sudden move would hasten it.

Too good to be true. And it was . . .

Because she’d be dead, and away from it—but they’d get Livvy. There was nowhere to hide now, under Mistress’ standing compulsion to feel and remember, from being back in her house, wanting to flee into madness from what she was doing to her daughter and her husband—leaving them to endure it.

The old pain started flaying her from the inside. she fought it.

she couldn’t abandon Livvy. Livvy didn’t know—did she? That it was mind control beyond that office door?

No time. The plane was burning and there was only one parachute . . .

“Olivia.” she whispered, wondering when some inhibition would crash down and leave her an automaton. “Only one of us has a soul left. Shoot yourself, quickly. Please.”

Livvy stared at her, trying to reach through sedation and confusion to what the corporate slut, with her eyes and voice suddenly full of truth at last, was begging her to do.

Livvy’s eyes met hers, clearing. The strength of her. God, god, Olivia, i wish i’d known you before—!

slave joyce heard the hammer click back. The gun was pointed at her.

God no no no! The new respect in Livvy’s eyes told joyce she was understanding—at the worst possible time.

And Livvy was going to risk slavery to free joyce first.

joyce tasted despair. No! You have a soul. Please . . .

The door opened, and someone gasped. slave joyce and Livvy turned together.

It was Anita, flushed and wide-eyed. Livvy wheezed, overloaded with seeing her again, and in the slave uniform.

Anita snapped into a braced stance and leveled her inducer almost from the hip, her face beautifully intense. Livvy and joyce were both frozen for a moment. joyce realized how close she was to Livvy, just across the desk.

she saw a flash.

slave joyce had been induced many times in her slavery to Mistress and she submitted easily, even gently aware of the setting Anita had used. she had no will to turn, but she saw Anita stride quickly past and heard her soothe Livvy, absently hurting for Anita as she heard her pet’s fear in the husky commands. The revolver’s hammer came slowly down.

So close . . .

Anita softly summoned carly. She told Livvy to obey carly, and then slave kit.

“I obey,” said Livvy, her nicotine rasp dissolved to a childish whisper. “I respond.” Her back was straight as carly led her out.

Anita put her arms around slave joyce. “You’re all right, Ma’am. Your pet will take care of you.”

she felt Anita spasm against her. Even as she felt her pet recover from whatever had just scared her, joyce wanted to beg, Please! i need to hold you, too, now! Command me! But Anita did not tell her to beg, and she relaxed, accepting it.

Then slave joyce’s head spun as Anita pulled back. “Follow me now.”

her pet had just commanded her, and the terrible danger of it loosened joyce’s thighs so much that she could barely obey the command to move. But her mind was still hypnotized by the inducer.

she had to obey.

30.

slave joyce followed Anita to the open-bay office area she’d been programmed to know as the main research area. she could see the colorfully personalized workstations, the signs obvious and subtle that Danziger’s people liked being there. Much was out of place, now, as kit and her counterparts turned it into a stockyard to sort the entranced captives as the other slaves brought them in.

It was as though the firm itself had been stripped and assaulted and lay stunned before its assailants.

A memory hit her through the inducer’s numbing trance like a bullet through water: her daughter Amanda lying nude in the scraps of her clothes, looking up at her, waiting for joyce to enslave her.

When Anita led her to an empty corner and turned, joyce’s heart paused when the younger woman looked into her eyes, and Amanda’s ghost seemed to smile at her.

joyce’s pet put her fingertips to joyce’s cheek and said, “Awaken now, Ma’ am. You can think clearly.”

joyce blinked. Mistress’ gift of awareness let her know the irony of being freed from hypnosis to resume her brainwashed submission to Her. she was thinking of a way to convey that to Anita when Anita, looking her in the eye, knelt slowly and smoothly, then bowed her head to touch the carpet and rose again.

When she looked up the calm on her face was sweat-thin, and her eyes desperately sought joyce’s. “Ma’am, I hope I did well. You were in trouble. I’m sorry.”

“Pet—” slave joyce took her by the shoulders, feeling her tension. “Anita. You did do well. i think you saved everyone. Maybe Livvy, too.” joyce knew where that thought would lead and added, “Stay standing, sleepyhead.”

she’d used that trigger since first she’d put Anita under, and by now Anita was thoroughly conditioned to it. Before she could think of what she’d saved Livvy from her own gun to face, she was swaying like a young sapling, and her eyes were lidded and inward but not yet asleep.

slave joyce gave her the calming formula she’d improvised the night Anita had harvested Janine, and then brought her out.

Then slave kit was with them. joyce wondered if the other slave had watched them just now and what the mindlessness behind her eyes made of it. she remembered kit with slave sheila the day they met in the bar, when she and kit were still free and sheila thought she was.

she collected that pain to bring to Mistress later.

“Pet,” kit said, and Anita straightened to attention, facing her.

“How may I obey, Controller?” joyce admired how completely Anita gave herself to the other slave set over her.

“You know the data systems here. Assist slave sheila in directing the captives who are downloading the records Mistress wishes.”

“I obey!” Anita swung briskly from attention to do her Controller’s bidding without a glance at joyce.

slave joyce and slave kit regarded each other. joyce looked back into kit’ s merciless eyes. “your pet is very obedient,” said kit, and walked away.

When she herself could think, joyce sometimes suspected that behind kit’s eyes might be something worse than behind her own. i hope i never understand how she thinks. If thinking’s what it is. she blinked and waited quietly for Mistress’ next commands to activate her, but there were no irresistible compulsions. Mistress was content to let her idle.

she strolled around, watching the slave team follow the program of first-level processing, choosing the victims to be carried off for deeper enslavement right away, the ones to be given powerful commands but left in place, and the ones who just needed some basic obedience protocols.

One party was leading women into a conference room they’d converted to a visual brainwashing center. Another was putting Livvy Danziger onto a gurney with an IV, following Mistress’ will to minimize mind control on the vanquished leader until She could see to it Herself.

After a while she looked for Anita and found her with sheila and another couple of slaves in a windowed office, lit only by a few halogen desklamps and the liquid glow of computers, watching while two wide-eyed secretaries wearing nothing but pantyhose downloaded files into a trio of laptops. The slaves seemed to be telling . . . war stories. she waited in the shadows of the corridor.

slave sheila was describing in a breathy voice how she’d caught two Danziger employees with an inducer flash against a glass-fronted door, firing between them with her own eyes shut. her voice thickened as she told of how the entranced women had stumbled to a halt, and how they’d softened to her commands and followed her back like sheep.

Anita stared raptly at her. One of the other slaves looked to her from sheila and said, “But Anita did so well, too! Five women obey Mistress now, and she didn’t miss!” Anita looked quickly at her, startled.

“i saw her,” said the other slave. “When that girl tried to resist us in Research, Anita just turned her off.” sheila and the other slaves laughed, softly and intimately, and joyce saw the way the precise attention made Anita weak.

“That cutie riding the reception desk,” sheila murmured. “Laurie. Anita did such a good job on her, too. When i talked with her she was just a little puddle of obedience.

“How did that feel?” she asked Anita.

slave joyce saw Anita fidget with the diskette she’d clearly forgotten she was holding, losing herself in sheila’s eyes and the memory that sheila’s voice was gently awakening.

“It . . . it . . . ohhh.” She turned to a window that looked out through a canyon of taller buildings to the glittering cityscape.

“Very pretty,” the second slave breathed.

“So pretty,” said sheila. “Someday it will be Mistress’ domain. All of it. Each light a worshipper thanking Her for Her control.”

“All of it . . .” Anita’s whisper was husky, and her legs stiffened as she brought them together.

“Imagine taking them,” said the third slave. “Each of them, going to sleep for you. Each one, learning to obey Mistress. No longer fighting or running. Just obeying . . .”

“Hhhhhh . . . obeying.” Anita’s back arched.

joyce stepped into view and went to join her pet by the window. she wasn’t certain whether this was better or worse than Anita being exposed to kit’s coldness, but the glassy look in Anita’s eyes worried her.

As she stood against Anita and put a proprietary arm around her, Anita turned in her embrace and stared at her in wonder. she felt how fast Anita’ s heart was beating.

“Ma’am,” she whispered. “It was my first time with everyone and they think I did so well. I was afraid, and there were—”

“Come with me,” joyce told her in a low voice, seeing Anita’s head bob weakly but not feeling her posture change as her eyes lost focus, looking through joyce.

Like she’s joined a cult, joyce thought, trying not to think of the days when she’d worried about cults.

she ran her hand down Anita’s back, enjoying the swell of her backside and letting her fingertips find the border of fabric and slide down the smooth, warm skin of Anita’s ass.

she squeezed, and felt Anita stiffen slightly.

Closing her eyes, her pet opened them again, and smiled into joyce’s face, aware and awake now. “Oh, Ma’am!” she sighed and leaned to rest her head in the hollow of joyce’s throat.

Looking over her head, joyce saw the knowing smiles of the other slaves who ‘d been playing with her pet. The two she didn’t know straightened and herded the Danziger secretaries out with the laptops. slave sheila walked by, resting her hand on joyce’s where she gently caressed Anita. she looked fondly at joyce’s pet and her smile seemed gentler.

“So sweet,” she said, and left them alone.

joyce looked at Anita, and took her hand away. Anita looked up at her.

“Time to go, sleepyhead.“ Anita sagged lightly against her hold, and her sudden helpless yielding as trance took her nearly made joyce let them both sink to the floor and devour her.

Instead she held her very close before whispering commands in her ear. Anita followed her this time, as she went to slave kit and told her she was taking her pet down to the shuttle to wait. slave kit nodded without comment and let them go.

In the van, she put Anita by the window, and sent her deeper asleep. How soft Anita looked now, so different from the amazon she’d been, invading Livvy’s office.

Now, in a quiet time, without cues of fear or power or violent arousal, just regard for her pet, slave joyce saw the uniform in a way she never had: Anita looked like an exhausted gymnast, overcome by her discipline.

Before she could stop herself joyce tried to recall whether she’d ever seen Amanda asleep like this in her leotard, but as usual all thoughts of Amanda led to the memory of her lying hypnotized on the couch, staring into a high-setting inducer, as joyce began to kneel between her thighs.

As usual, sheer fright let joyce tip herself onto another mental track. she turned and put her arm behind the younger woman, feeling Anita’s cool dark hair and then the warmth of her bare neck and her body under the lycra.

On the trip here, she’d awakened Anita once or twice, and Anita had clearly wanted to stay awake, just to spend time with her. Knowing her pet lacked the training of the other slaves sitting emptily around them, and needed sleep, joyce shook her head and put Anita under each time, and the way Anita submitted to it, not wanting to displease slave joyce by pleading for her attention, had hurt her.

This time, with no mission at the end, joyce decided to indulge her pet. she looked forward to sleeping with her in the bed Mistress had let them have, but for now, they could sit together and watch the towns and the countryside slide by.

Anita stirred very slightly, feeling her keeper’s touch or just in a dream blessedly free from what lived in joyce’s. Guilty at robbing her of that, joyce was gentle as she leaned down and kissed Anita at her hairline, and rested her lips there.

Despite her care, Anita woke and moved so gently that joyce had to fight not to wrap both arms around her pet. she watched Anita start to speak, saw her lips purse into M, had a sudden horrified premonition of the word that Anita’s confused mind would give voice to . . .

“Ma’am?” Anita’s whisper kinked with her effort to wake up and be attentive. joyce almost cried with relief.

31.

Proudly nude, Anita stood with slaves Mistress had chosen personally. They flanked an empty throne decorated with hawk motifs, black metal on a plinth of blacker stone. Joyce, also nude, stood across from her. All of Mistress ’ women stood straight and silent, looking at the nude captive who knelt in the open end of the V they formed.

Livvy Danziger thrashed in her bonds. Anita watched her, seeing the impulsive jerk against the straps and manacles as the trigger woke her from the trance, then a more deliberate effort that systematically went through the possible directions, to discover no way out. Now Livvy was pulling as if she were doing isometrics against the resistance. Her breathing whispered from the walls and floor, the only sound but what her body made as she contained her struggles.

Anita looked at Livvy, seeing her lithe, strong limbs straining. She saw the places where Livvy showed her age, the cellulite on her thighs, but the strange sympathy just made her admire Livvy more as she writhed heedless of being stripped before strangers, trying uselessly to free herself.

Anita had learned to hear the breath that Mistress sometimes let out before using the speakers, and stood straighter.

“When you get tired of that, Ms Danziger, please let us know.”

Livvy barely paused at Mistress’ words, and went on for a moment before stopping. “Why us?”

“Why who, Ms Danziger?”

“Women,” Livvy said, her tone as even as if it were a staff meeting. Anita felt faint as she imagined Livvy conducting a staff meeting while nude and bound. “Why do you hate us this much?”

“I would never spend this much time and attention on something I hate, Ms Danziger. May I call you Olivia?”

Livvy breathed some more. “Oh, what the hell. What do I call you?”

“Whatever pleases you, Olivia. And that’s not a common phrase of Mine.” Mistress chuckled, but Livvy stared at the foot of the throne, finding a midpoint that left her gaze neither worshipfully upward nor brokenly downward. “When I want you to learn proper address, you will.”

“What will you do with me?” A purely factual question.

“Evaluate you first, Olivia. What I need you for requires a convert, not a drone. I need to know how your psyche’s put together so I can take it apart and make the changes that will leave you worshipping Me. Worshipping the shit that drips from Me.”

Livvy winced, not expecting that. Anita shivered, seeing her former patron disoriented.

“There’s something already,” Mistress observed brightly. “It will of course be much more methodical than that. It will take time, too, but some of your staff will explain to everyone that you’re on a sudden trip to see some women with vision in Europe.

“You’ll be drugged and hypnotized, in ways that make consent irrelevant. Gradually your trainers will modify behavior to My specifications. Then you’ll do that for us. Thought and belief will follow. In time you’ll realize that you’re dreamed since girlhood of the chance to be my property.

“Perhaps I’ll teach you to remember envying your mother’s collar, and her telling you to behave and wait.”

Livvy sat through that stoically, but she began to flush.

“Enslaving your underlings is an ongoing thing, too, but I don’t need as much from them, beyond obedience and the ability to let programming tell them when not to use their minds. So I can use them in place while their conditioning goes on.

“Like the delightful carly. Smart girl, and you knew that, but did you know her actual IQ is 185? Deep hypnosis can discover the most amazing things. she’s actually been deliberately testing lower, to avoid standing out as a geek, and that takes focus. It won’t trouble her further. As it happens, I’ve given her to another of my slaves to make a ‘bonbon’ of, and . . .

“I see you already grasp what that means, Olivia.” Livvy had dropped her gaze, but as Anita tried to see whether Livvy were saddened or just worried, she couldn’t stop thinking of Carly crawling mindlessly across the floor toward her, her eyes emptied of self and refilled with frothy eagerness or haunted hunger, quivering with each touch of skin to stone.

“Yes, it’s cliche, Olivia. Smart woman to pretty idiot. But I prefer to think of it as classic.”

Anita tried to focus on Livvy, but she kept seeing Carly on all fours, kneeling. Dreams on Carly’s couch, hidden until she was near sleep, wrapped themselves in the image now.

She wondered what commanding a bonbon-Carly would feel like, seeing her friend as compliant candy. She thought of the rush she’d gotten programming Laurie, and that had just been admin. Her pussy clenched at the memory.

What would it be like to command a hypnotized sex slave like Carly?

What would it be like to be—?

Anita pulled back from the edge and looked across at Joyce, but Joyce seemed lost in her own world as she looked at Livvy Danziger.

She tried to think of the fear and guilt when she’d sent Toni in to soak up whatever Gail had been ready to throw, perhaps to die. But that felt distant and imaginary. All she could see were Gail’s lidded eyes, her erotically wanton disarray. And Sandra, who’d knelt obediently through it all, taking herself deeper into a mindless trance, her thoughts completely tranquilized when Anita had led the other two out.

Just because Anita had told her to.

She thought about Janine in her kitchen, about taking Janine in her kitchen.

Anita felt cold, suddenly, and it had nothing to do with being naked. Nor did it do anything about the heat between her legs.

She hadn’t been paying attention. Mistress and Livvy had been fencing. Livvy knew she was being played with, and was too smart not to see the inevitable outcome.

“I have things to tend to now, Olivia, so I’ll need you to go back to your cell. Go like a good girl, or else you’ll be hypnotized again with an inducer and told to crawl there.”

Something in Mistress’ saying good girl hummed along Anita’s nerves and she found herself stepping across the hard floor, unsurprised to find another collared woman joining her. They drew Livvy to her feet and brought her to a room with a medical-looking chair. Their programming let them secure Livvy to the chair.

Anita found herself able to stay when the other slavewoman wandered back out again without ever speaking.

She looked at Livvy, waiting for Livvy to look back. Finally she said her name.

Livvy breathed. “You’re not there anymore,” she said quietly. “I know what they’re going to do to me. They’ve already done it to you. I’m sorry: Amelia really seemed like a hell of a woman. I wish I’d gotten to know

her.”

Anita swallowed hard. “Anita.” Her voice nearly cracked. She tried again. “My name is Anita, Livvy.”

Livvy closed her eyes. “God. They do that, too. Wonder what they’ll tell me my name really is.”

“No. Livvy, I’m not brainwashed. I’m—” What? Doing this because I want to?

Finally, Livvy looked at her. “Under the circumstances, honey, that doesn’ t sound very convincing.”

Anita sighed. “Well, I don’t know who won the pennant in ‘48, either, so I don’t—”

Livvy gave a short bark of laughter and closed her eyes. “Almost, Amelia. Anita. Almost convincing. But the joke might not be yours.”

Anita stepped to the chair and knelt, looking up at her. “Livvy. It happened like . . . Mistress, the woman you were arguing with in there, took over a group I was in. I ran. I left everything. I found you.” She felt her eyes watering and tried to ignore it.

“You gave me a place and let me room with Carly and . . . they found me. They got Carly.”

Livvy turned away.

“I’m—”

“Not you. I knew something was up with Carly. God.”

Anita swallowed again. “I turned myself in. Running didn’t work and fighting—how do you fight it? Then they said they were—”

“You came with them and did all that to us and they didn’t make you?”

Anita stood slowly, looking Livvy in the eye. “Yes.”

Livvy stared at her.

“No. That bitch in there does have you brainwashed, Amelia, Anita, and she’s weird enough to enjoy making you think you’re not.”

“I’m not . . .” Anita laughed softly. “Am too. Am not.”

Livvy looked up, and Anita had to swallow again at how she looked strapped into the chair. Livvy’s smile was getting lopsided. “Maybe. But if you really do have a mind . . . Anita . . . then you really did volunteer, and I don’t really want to talk to you.”

Anita looked down. “You helped when I was alone, Livvy. The least I can do is be here.”

Livvy considered that. “Mind games. But if she wanted my brain fried the bitch would have started by now. And it’s not like I have anything better to do right now.

“What are they going to do?”

Now Anita heard the fear, and it made her dizzy to know that part of her exulted.

“What Mistress said. Hypnotize you, keep at you until you can’t resist anymore, and then turn you into the Livvy she wants to have.”

Livvy looked up at her. “No.”

Anita knelt again. “Livvy, this sounds so odd, but it’s easier to just give in. She can make it hurt. Not torture . . . not body pain, anyway. But I’ve seen how she can hurt. My keeper, Joyce, is—”

“Joyce? The one who came to my office?” When Anita nodded, Livvy whispered, “I underestimated her.”

“She’s special to Mistress, somehow. Mistress gave me to her.”

Livvy looked at her. “Back to too weird, Anita. I just know the woman looked me in the eye and made me believe she thought dying was the best deal around—and she was letting me take it first.

“And I couldn’t—”

Anita was about to thank her for not killing Joyce when Mistress’ voice filled the room.

“Anita?”

She came to attention on reflex, and let the strange excitement about doing it in front of Livvy’s astonished eyes bring her taut.

“Yes, Mistress? How may I obey?”

“Well, that depends on Olivia. Olivia? For your first session, you can receive subliminal commands while Anita licks you to orgasm to seal in the lesson, or you can just undergo an endurance induction.”

Livvy looked at Anita, and Anita found herself smiling down. “It’s really all right, Livvy. I like doing it.” I’m quite the mind-control sex tool around here.

“Uh-huh.” Livvy’s voice shook slightly. “Well, I like women a lot, but—

She was eyeing Anita differently since her response to Mistress’ voice, but now she was distracted by her fear. Trying hard, she said, “—but not like that.”

You will. Anita waited for Mistress.

“As you like, Olivia. Please look up. Or not, as you choose.” Mistress’ smile was evident. Anita looked up and saw a lighted spiral start to rotate on the ceiling. She tore her own eyes away, and saw Livvy looking at her again.

The room was darkening.

“Look away all you like, Olivia. In time it’ll be the only thing to see here. Not a major distraction, but after a couple of days that will change. And by then you’ll hardly notice the IVs.

“Anita, go to your keeper now.”

She looked down at Livvy. “Anytime, Livvy. Just tell her you want to surrender. Please don’t put yourself—”

“Fuck you,” Livvy said, the spiral reflecting from the corners of her eyes as she turned her head, then closed them.

Anita still wanted to touch her, but that made it easier to leave, and Mistress had spoken.

She almost ran back to Joyce.

32.

Anita wasn’t weeping this time, but slave joyce held her anyway, and they lay quietly entangled. Anita said nothing about any of it for now, and they waited in each other’s smooth warmth until sex seemed worth moving for.

slave joyce’s thoughts drifted for a bit, then, and a feeling rose in her that she felt no desire to suppress. It seemed insane, but she enjoyed yielding to it, almost like an impulse to run to exhaustion. she leaned over and kissed Anita, whose eyes opened.

“i need you to rest for now, sleepyhead.” Anita’s eyes drooped, and joyce instructed her to sleep. Again, feeling her pet’s body go limp at her command tempted her to play with it, but the feeling was stronger. she slid away from Anita and went to the floor.

“Mistress. This slave begs her Owner’s attention. Please.”

“Yes, joyce?”

“Mistress, there is something i need to say. i do not understand why, but i . . . want to. And You commanded me to report my feelings.”

“I did. What do you feel, joyce?”

“Mistress.” They were back. Tears. “Thank You.”

Mistress was silent.

“For giving me my pet, Mistress. i love her and she is . . . wonderful. i do not know why You want me to feel this good, Mistress. But i do and this slave knows her Mistress does not let things happen by accident.”

joyce was feeling more naked than she had ever been in her life.

For all that it stung and frightened her, she liked it.

“i know that it just deepens my vulnerability to You, Mistress. It gives You more ways to hurt me.” she waited for Mistress to seize on that, but Mistress let her speak.

“i do not like it when You hurt me, Mistress. But . . .

“This feels good, Mistress. i did not ever, ever think i could feel so good again. i am sorry if You did not wish that.” joyce’s next words vanished. she astonished herself by crying again, for a moment.

“i do not understand, Mistress. i am grateful and i have to give thanks, i am ignorant and I have to beg knowledge. You are my divinity, Mistress. i beg it from You.

“You will hurt me soon, Mistress. You will take it away. You will command me to destroy what i have. To hurt her.” joyce’s breathing hitched. “To make her die hating me, or thinking i hate her.

“And when You do, Mistress, i will obey You.

“But until then . . . Thank You for giving her to me. i love her. Thank You.”

she knelt, not even waiting.

“As you say, joyce.” Mistress’ voice conveyed no emotion. “Perhaps your pet’s making a Taoist out of you.

“Or perhaps you appreciate what someone else observed:

“’I can’t take that from you. I’ll make you forget, if I want—but it still happened, joyce, there was a time you were happy. Even if you forget it, it still happened.’”

Mistress didn’t try to mimic Amanda’s voice. She didn’t have to. Amanda’s last words drove into joyce like a blunt lance and she fell forward, mouth open and eyes shut.

Part of her knew i might not even remember her voice now.

Part of her knew Mistress remembers those words. Wherever Amanda is, she was heard.

All of her lay on the floor, shaking and screaming without sound.

Mistress spoke again, but joyce couldn’t understand words. she distantly hoped she wasn’t being commanded and failing to obey.

Warm skin by her own, soft lips on her face.

“Oh, Ma’am. Joyce.” Anita was beside her on the floor. “Yes, Mistress. I’ll take care of her.”

Anita tried gently to get joyce up, but joyce couldn’t move. she felt Anita’s hand on her. she heard sounds and found her head being raised gently, and a pillow was under her when she was let down again. Then there was the coolness of a sheet and the weight of a blanket, and finally the satin skin of her pet, of her lover Anita, against her.

she heard Anita whispering, and realized Anita was trying to hypnotize her. Why was Anita even trying when it was . . . clear that . . . there was no . . .

Just before joyce slid into the trance, she realized that, even when she pulled the bedding down so she could sleep with joyce on the floor, Anita had not once let go of her.