The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“The Odyssey”

by ThatSquickGuy ()

Chapter 4

Part 3: Answers

Chloe was the first to wake up. As her eyes slowly opened, she smiled because the first thing she saw was the handsome face of Wash, still asleep. She straightened his short brown hair and lightly kissed his nose. She wanted to enjoy this moment forever, but that was not to be. As she cuddled up closer to him enjoying the feel of his strong body next to hers, a loud alarm suddenly went off.

“What? What is it?” Wash mumbled as tried to sit up. His eyes weren’t even open and he’d forgotten that Chloe was resting on top of his arm.

“Wash!” Chloe exclaimed as he accidently almost pushed her off the bed.

“Oh! Chloe! I’m sorry!” Wash yawned as he extricated his arm from under her and, working his way over her, unsteadily got up.

“What’s going on?”

Wash either forgot or he didn’t notice that he didn’t have any clothes on as he staggered towards the door. It was a good thing for him the door was already locked down. He ran face first into it as he, still half asleep, tried to push the door open button on his way out. “Owwww!” He moaned.

“Wash.”

“What?” He slowly turned around. Chloe smiled. She pointed to his lack of pants as she gathered the sheet up around her. “Oh. Yeah.” He quickly grabbed his underwear and pants off the floor.

“What happened?” She asked again, hoping he was more alert now.

“Some kind of lockdown. Must be ship wide.” He said, as he hopped on one foot while slipping back into his underwear.

“So, we’re stuck here?”

“Well until they call it off or we hack the door, yes.”

“What could have gone on?”

“I don’t know.” He had his pants on and was looking at the computer terminal in the room. “But I do know we’re in hyperspace right now!”

“What? I didn’t think we were going to leave right away.”

“We weren’t going to when I…” He looked at the clock on the screen. It had been over three hours since he left his post. He grimaced a little. “Left. To come back here to… Find you.” He paused and looked at her awkwardly. “Chloe, I, I didn’t mean to…”

“Wash, it’s okay.” She paused a second. “I think it was something we both wanted for a long time.” She smiled slightly as she looked up at him.

“Yeah… I guess, I guess I’ve always known.” He chuckled slightly. “Ever since that time I took you out back to watch the stars with my dad’s telescope.” He looked down and away from her for a moment. “I just never found the way to tell you…”

“What?” Chloe asked softly.

“I love you.” His gaze penetrating her crystal blue eyes all the way to her soul.

Chloe blushed and said, “Wash, I…”

Just then Evie’s message to the security team came over the intercom asking for help transporting someone to sick bay. Both of them jumped a little at the loud noise. This spurred Chloe into action.

“Evie! We have to find out what going on!” She said as she quickly got up out of the bed and started drying herself off. She was trying to clean up a little after their romp before she got dressed.

“Woah! Remember what happened last time you tried to help her? I’m sure Evie’s got this under control.”

“Wash, if one person’s hurt there could be others. We have to at least call and find out.”

“All right. We’ll call.” Wash went to the intercom and called the bridge. There was no answer. Then he sent a text-based message to all the bridge consoles. They waited for what felt like forever but was actually just a minute or so, hoping to hear something back. Still nothing, so Wash tried the ship wide intercom. “This is Lieutenant Washburne please state the nature of the lockdown.” No one responded.

“Wash…” Chloe looked at him worriedly.

“Yeah...” He nodded slowly. “Maybe I’d better get that door open.” He went over to the computer and started digging through it to find some answers as well as trying to unlock the door.

“Anything?” Chloe had finished getting her clothes on and was looking over his shoulder.

“The lockdown started in the commissary, some kind of bio-hazard, but I still can’t figure out why no one’s answering on the bridge.”

“What about the rest of the ship? Why did no one answer us? Is anyone okay?”

“I don’t know. It looks like most of the internal systems have been locked. It must have just happened otherwise we wouldn’t have heard Evie.” He turned around to her for a second. “Our call never got out. I can’t even get the internal sensors or cameras.” He paused for a second, then continued thinking out loud. “I wonder if this related to what happened in the shuttle bay earlier? Everything just started going crazy at once. Could someone have gotten back into the computer system?”

“Can you get us out of here?” Chloe was now even more worried about her friends.

“Give me a minute.” Wash smiled a little to reassure her. He typed furiously and, after quite a while longer than a minute, he was rewarded by a beeping sound from the door.

“Great job!” Chloe hugged him. Then she headed for the door. “Come on!”

“Wait!” She stopped and turned around. “We need to think this through. Everything between here and the commissary will be locked down. And then everything past that. The doors won’t open unless you have an environmental suit on or the right badge.”

“Can’t you just open the doors like ours?”

“If want to sit and wait for hours to get anywhere. There’s a lot of doors in case of a hull breach anywhere. I wish I could tell which badges it was accepting, but I can’t. It’s probably only the Captain’s and maybe Carmen’s, but I don’t want to guess wrong. That could get the doors locked until someone forces them open.” Wash frowned and thought for a second. “I know!” He suddenly smiled. “I think we could get to the access tube just down the hall and open it to get down to the science level and sick bay. That way we can see what’s going on with Evie and maybe she’ll have some suits for us. It shouldn’t take me too long to open that up.”

“Okay! Let’s go!” Chloe headed out.

“Hold on, I’m right behind you!” Wash grabbed his shirt off the floor and followed behind.

* * *

Nancy followed Carmen back to her quarters. Carmen’s badge allowing them through the two sealed doors isolating the elevator from both the front and back of the ship. Just up the hallway and only for a split second, she thought saw the Captain bringing Jenny into her quarters. Nancy shook her head a little. She wasn’t sure if she saw that right, but it didn’t matter now. The last air-tight door closed, locking the cockpit and Captain’s quarters out from the rest of the ship. They stopped in front of Nancy’s quarters. The door slid open for Carmen.

“All right. Head in.” Carmen said as nicely as she could although she still sounded gruff.

“Please, I want to help.” Nancy pleaded.

“You can. Wait until Dr. Carnahan gives you a clean bill of health and then you help check everyone else out.”

“But…”

“Please.” She motioned her inside. “Clean up and wait until you are cleared by the doctor. I have others to escort and then I have to report to the Captain.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Nancy replied, knowing she couldn’t change her superior officer’s mind.

The door clicked and locked behind her. Nancy cleaned off her bloodied hands and threw off her stained uniform. How could this thing have gotten past the scans? She thought as she slid into a clean uniform. She sat there pondering it for a minute then she realized something she had overlooked.

“Wait a minute. Who scanned them?” She said to herself.

She hadn’t. She had been alone in the cockpit so no one else there had. And with all the confusion about the shuttle bay, it was doubtful if anyone there had scanned them. If what the Captain said was true they just waltzed onto the ship without anyone looking at them.

She had overhead what Marybeth had been telling Carmen. If that was true Frank was on the surface. That meant the creatures were too. Why hadn’t the rest of the team seen them? And how come they didn’t find the creature on the scans of the planet?

Nancy’s eyes widened as she had a horrifying thought: What if more of them got on the shuttle? Or even worse, got into the rest of the team.

Is that what Evelyn and Carmen had been whispering about? She wondered.

She had to get a hold of Carmen and ask her. She called her on the intercom. But nothing happened.

“Come on.” She tried everything she could think of to get it to work but still nothing. She had to know what was going on.

At least she knew how to get the door open. Back in her Academy days she had more than once spoofed a superior’s badge to get out after hours. This wasn’t much different. After seeing everyone’s codes so many times she practically knew them all by heart. She managed to copy Carmen’s code onto her badge and the door slid open with no problem.

She had her excuse all made up to convince the guard that she should be out after getting cleared by Evelyn. But apparently that wasn’t necessary. When she stepped out, there wasn’t a guard in sight. Where were they? All on the other side of the commissary? That didn’t matter. Luckily, Carmen’s quarters were just down the hall, so she ran a fast as she could and opened the door. She wasn’t there!

“Damn it.” Nancy mumbled.

She was about to head back towards the rest of the quarters, but quickly stopped when she heard the front air-tight door start unlocking. She dashed inside Carmen’s room and slid the door almost closed, leaving only a sliver open so she could see who went past. The cockpit door relocked and she heard very soft footsteps approaching. She held her breath hoping it wasn’t Carmen herself.

She covered her mouth and only barely stopped herself from screaming when Marybeth walked by, naked as the day she was born.

She must have one too! Nancy was too afraid to even breathe.

Nancy heard the air-tight door unlock and open, then very soon re-engage. But not the second door. That meant Marybeth took the elevator.

She came from the cockpit. Does that mean she got them as well? Nancy shivered at the thought. She waited for a minute in case Marybeth had seen her before she started breathing normally again.

These things could be all over the ship! She could be after Evelyn right now to stop her from finding anything out! Nancy looked around the room and ‘borrowed’ a spare stun baton.

She opened the door slowly and peeked around before slipping out into the hall. Indecisive for a moment, she finally decided to follow Marybeth.

“There could be too many up there from me to deal with.” She said to herself looking at the cockpit.

She opened the air-tight door and headed for the elevator. She pressed the button for the elevator and tried to judge how long it took to get to her. It took a bit longer than she thought it might.

“She must have gone down to the cargo level.” Nancy muttered. She readied herself as the doors opened, just in case Marybeth had come back up. No one was in the elevator and Nancy got in quickly.

She decided that she had to find out what Marybeth was up to and hit the button for the cargo level. Then she could get everyone’s help.

If they weren’t all infested.

* * *

Once back in sick bay, Evie quickly started Lucy on a Gelofusine infusion to help replace some of the blood she lost. She had gotten to her pretty fast and luckily, Lucy had Nancy to help her right away. So, hopefully, Lucy should be fine… As long as whatever venom that creature had injected her with didn’t have any other effects. Evie had hooked her up to just about every machine she had to test her with. It took longer than she wanted with her suit getting in the way all the time. All of Lucy’s vitals seemed normal, her pupils seemed to contract fine. Her brain activity was normal. It was just that Lucy was paralyzed.

“This must be how the creatures subdue their prey.” Evie reasoned out loud. “I wish you could tell me if you’re okay in there Lucy.” She said, looking down at her.

It must wear off pretty fast if Frank was able to walk around before the rest of the team got to the shuttle. Frank… This was the part she wasn’t looking forward to.

Once Lucy was resting comfortably, Evie checked everything one last time and finally set to work examining Frank’s body. She wished that the security guards would have stayed, but they had to help make sure that everyone got into their rooms safely and orderly.

And stayed there, she thought.

They’d left her a stun baton to defend herself if the creature wasn’t completely dead… But that was a last resort. If what Nancy had said was true about how fast the creature was able to stun Lucy she’d barely have any time at all to react. Hopefully her suit would protect her from anything the creature might try.

Evie knew that she had to make sure that there weren’t any other creatures on board. The quarantine would help, but if scanners weren’t working to find them she’d have to find another way. And fast. She had laid Frank’s body out on one of the tables in the science lab. The creature’s hideous tentacles were draped over his sides.

Evie started recording for her log: “The creature’s body and tentacles are a grayish color. Kind of wrinkled and dry to the touch.” She noted, looking at her glove. “The main tentacle, the one with the, stinger, on it, is about, uh, 90 centimeters long and about four centimeters wide.” She picked it up and looked it over. It was shocking. How could this fit inside him? She shook her head worriedly, she had to continue.

“The other, approximately, 20, tentacles vary in length from 15 to about 30 centimeters and are about eight millimeters wide. They must be able to coil up inside the body somehow. Perhaps rapidly uncoiling the main tentacle is what gives it the speed that was reported by Nancy.” She mused out loud as she examined Frank’s jaw, pushing several tentacles out of the way to do it. “It looks like the tentacles dislocated his mandible as they tried to push out at the same time.”

What could it use all these for? Evie wondered. Perhaps they were for mobility or maybe for defending itself.

She set to work trying to extract the creature from Frank’s mouth, but it seemed like it was anchored very deep inside him. Or too much of it was wedged in his mouth. She thought. With as much of the creature that was sticking out of him, there couldn’t be that much more inside, right? She didn’t want to do what was coming but she had no choice. She’d never studied as a coroner and wished one of her instructors was here now.

Taking her laser scalpel, she started making an incision on his neck to see if she could find the base of the creature. She screamed slightly and jumped back as more of the creature’s grey flesh started oozing out of the new opening. How big was this thing?! After a few exploratory pokes to make sure that it wasn’t still alive, she slowly continued her work. Once she got the top of his rib cage, she set her scalpel down and carefully started peeling back the flesh of his neck. Her hands were almost shaking when she saw that the creature was still deeper into him than she could see. She took hold of the creature and started pulling it out of his esophagus, slowly and steadily. It took a minute, but when she was done a full 30cm of the creature were laying on top of Frank’s body.

“It’s the length of his entire throat!” Evie thought out loud. She picked up the creature’s body to look closer. “It looks like it’s burrowing into his neck.” She said with disgust as she looked at the back of the creature. She recomposed herself to start making more notes. “Small, tendrils, I guess, are extending out of the creature towards where the back of Frank’s throat would have been. They appear to be long enough to attach to his spinal cord. And there are corresponding injuries in the lining of Frank’s esophagus. This could be how the creature exerts motor control over the victim. It looks like the creature was disconnecting its tendrils from Frank as it was dying. That could explain the muscle spasms that everyone reported.”

She set the creature down and tried to examine further up his throat. The bright lights on suit were helping a little even if the rest of the of it was getting in the way. Evie thought. “The tendrils seem to be mostly concentrated at the upper end of his esophagus. I can’t even budge the creature at the top of his throat. That appears to be where the creature starts. It might be connected to his skull, but I can’t see until I cut some of it out of the way.”

She pulled the creature as best she could out of the way and looked at the base of it. That’s when she noticed two larger tentacles hooked into his carotid artery and jugular vein. “It’s hooked into his circulatory system, too?” What could it be doing to him? Feeding off of him? She had to add this to her log. “The creature seems to be using the human circulatory system for some function. It might be for waste disposal or for food for the creature. This does support the idea that the creature is a parasite of some kind.”

She looked back in the other room at Lucy. “After it paralyses people and takes control, how does this thing imitate them so well? It was even good enough to fool his friends. Maybe it’s further into his nervous system than I think.”

She took her scanner and looked at it again. It was still registering that the creature was barely there. It was reading like the creature was Frank. But now after all her work, she was getting some weird radiation off of it. Nothing had changed except the incisions she had made. “Now what could this be from?” She mused. She took her scalpel and was about to slice into the base of the creature when the door to sick bay opened.

* * *

Chloe and Wash had spent the last several minutes crawling down the claustrophobia-inducing access tube to the lower level. Wash finally got the door unlocked and, after getting through a couple more air-tight doors, they were now standing in sick bay. The first thing that Chloe saw was Evie standing over someone with her scalpel. Off to her right, Lucy had been hooked up to almost everything in sick bay. Evie had looked up when the sick bay door opened and now was coming back towards them.

“What are you guys doing here?” Evie exclaimed.

Chloe felt her cheeks getting red looking at Evie again and quickly looked past her. Maybe she should have waited outside.

“We couldn’t call anyone from our room.” Wash noticed Chloe’s discomfort. “Uh.. Rooms. So, we wanted to find somebody.” He quickly corrected. “We even tried the ship-wide. Did you hear anything?”

“No.” Evie was confused. She looked back and forth between them. “Is something wrong with the main communications system?”

Chloe had been looking past Evie and saw the horrible creature laying on the table. She finally found her voice, “What is that thing?!”

“It’s some kind of parasitic lifeform.” Evie said. “We think it’s been inside Frank since the second trip to the planet.” Chloe looked at her worriedly. “I’m also afraid there might be more on board.” Evie continued.

Chloe hugged her arms around herself and turned away from the window. That thought didn’t comfort her any.

“So this is what we heard about right before the intercom went down.” Wash thought out loud.

“Yes. The creature started coming out of poor Frank here and attacked Lucy before Carmen subdued it.”

“You said you thought there might be more. Why?” Wash asked.

“Frank was acting perfectly normal. Until he wasn’t. According to everyone that was there. More of these things might have gotten up here or be inside other people. But I can’t figure out how to see if someone has a creature or not.” Evie looked at them almost suspiciously from behind the glass wall.

“You think we might have one too?” Wash asked, surprised.

“I don’t know. I need help to figure this out. But I’m not sure who I can trust anymore.” She said with a hint of sadness in her voice.

“Are the creatures related to the slime?” Chloe spoke up without looking at Evie. She had been looking at Lucy.

“I… don’t know.” Now it was Evie’s turn to be embarrassed. “I haven’t found any slime on the creature.” She said, turning slightly away from the window. “And right now, the main property of the slime seems to be as an… aphrodisiac.”

“Yeah…” Chloe turned around and her eyes were a little misty. “I’m sorry, Evie.” Her mouth trembled a little at the words. “For everything…”

“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have made you do that.” Evie smiled sadly at her.

“Thanks.” They just stood there for a moment not knowing what to say. Both of them trying to not look directly at the other for fear they would cry.

“We haven’t been near anyone who’s been down to the planet, so you can trust us.” Wash interjected.

“I’ve always trusted you guys.” Evie smiled softly. “Even when I shouldn’t.”

Chloe’s determination was renewed a little. “I want to help. I want to make sure that these things don’t get anyone else.”

“You’re the boss Evie. What can we do?” Wash wanted to know.

Evie quickly assumed control. “I have another environmental suit in that compartment over there.” Evie pointed to the left side of the room. “Chloe, put it on and give me a hand in here trying to look Frank over. Maybe we can figure out how to detect these things. Wash, why don’t you see if you can get a hold of anyone. Or find out what’s wrong. I want to be able to call the security team if we need them. Use my computer over there.”

“Sounds good!” Chloe jumped into action and retrieved the still slightly slimy suit from the locker.

“I’ll get on it.” Wash smiled and headed to the computer.

“Um, Evie?” Chloe held up the moist torso part of the ensemble.

“I think it’s okay. I think it must lose its potency after a while of being exposed to our atmosphere. It hasn’t been bothering me any while I’ve been in sick bay.”

“Okay…” Chloe started putting it on while Evie went back to her work.

“Chloe why don’t help me figure out where these radiation readings are coming from.” Evie called out.

“Sure. Just a second.” Chloe was struggling to get the suit on. “Wash, can you help for a second?” She wined a little when she tried to reach the back lock on it. Her arms just not quite long enough to reach.

“Yeah. Sure.” Wash laughed a little at her predicament. He locked the suit’s torso to the pants for her. Then wobbled a bit as he stood up straight again. “Whew… I don’t know how you can stand it in there.”

“What?”

“That smell. It’s making me dizzy just standing here.” He sniffled a little.

“I don’t smell any… Wash, get back!” Chloe pushed him back and grabbed her helmet off the floor.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“The slime’s starting to affect you now too!” She threw her helmet on and ran into the lab. Locking the door behind her.

“I guess I’ll just stay out here then!” Wash called out as he headed back to the computer. He dried his slightly damp fingers on his pants.

“Evie, the slime doesn’t get any weaker over time. We got used to it.” Chloe was worried.

“Maybe being around the slime once builds up some sort of tolerance for its properties.” Evie was curious. “We’ll have to figure that out later. Right now, we need to find out why this thing died and how we can detect more of them if they’re here.”

“Okay... But you know I’m not very good around this kind of thing.” Chloe pointed to Frank’s body without looking.

“That’s okay. Why don’t you work at the computer and look at the readings I’ll send to you?”

“Thanks.” Chloe sat down and looked over what was already on the screen. Evie told her all about how the parasite used its stinger to attack Lucy and what it did to someone’s body once it was inside. Chloe shivered a little and was glad she didn’t have to look at it very much.

What would be like to have one of things manipulate you like a puppet? It must have been awful. Chloe shivered again and tried to focus on other things. The readings about the size of the creature always seemed to end wherever it joined Frank’s body. So, if the parasite was all the way inside someone a normal scan would only read the person.

“Chloe what do you see about the radiation? I’m trying to find how far the creature is into Frank’s spine.” Evie was working to remove the creature entirely from Frank. Cutting at the base of it with her scalpel.

“It looks like it’s most concentrated in the blood on the table. Can you scan just the creature’s blood and some of Frank’s too?”

“Sure.” She sliced one of the tentacles and scanned the small amount that came out. “Here’s the creature’s.” Evie made a small incision on Frank’s leg and scanned his blood as well.

Chloe looked them over. “Evie, do you have Frank’s blood?”

“Yeah, I just sent it to you.” Evie said, not looking. She was back at work trying to extricate the parasite.

“No, that’s the creature’s blood.”

“No, it’s…” Evie stopped mid-sentence. “That’s how it’s doing it!” She ran over to Chloe and looked at the screen. “Somehow while it’s feeding off him it’s making its own blood just like his.”

“Like it’s adapting to him?”

“Yes! That way his body won’t try to reject it. And the creature must be altering its own tissues somehow to make a close enough copy to fool our sensors!”

“Oh! Just like that one shapeshifter species we studied in class.”

“The Zygons. Yes!” Evie was excited.

“But where does the radiation come in?” Chloe asked.

“Maybe it’s what hurt the creature enough to make it want to leave Frank’s body. I didn’t get a chance to look at it. What kind is it?”

“It’s a mix of beta and gamma radiation.” Chloe looked through the list of detected elements. “It’s coming from… Sodium-22. Why would he have that in him? And in such a high concentration?”

“I don’t know. And why wouldn’t I have detected before? Go though that list again.” They scanned down it until Evie stopped it. “There.” She pointed out one of the molecules. “That’s Zeolite. It’s used to help absorb radiation. It’s so far off the normal things I scan for that I would never have noticed.”

“So, he knew that something was wrong if he was taking something for it.”

“Yes. But why wouldn’t he have let me know? I don’t remember seeing anything in his medical record that would lead to this.” Evie mused.

“Maybe I can try to find out where it came from?”

“That’s a good idea.”

“But if the Sodium-22 is what killed the creature then we know how to get rid of any more parasites.” Chloe said hopefully.

“Yeah. But it’s not something we just have lying around and it’s not good for us either at the dose we’d need. That’s why Frank was taking the Zeolite: to keep it from killing him. If we can figure out why it worked we might be able to use something else to similar effect.” Evie commented as she went back to work on Frank’s body.

So, the parasite drank Frank’s blood and made itself sick enough to try to get out of him at just the wrong time. Chloe thought as she dug through any record she could find about Frank. But why did it take so long to try to come out of him? Why not sooner or when he went back to his quarters or any other time he was alone? It was strange that there was such a delay in the radiation affecting the creature. Why would it affect the creature so much more than Frank if they were using almost the same blood? It didn’t make sense.

Chloe had been digging through the records for a few minutes now. Evie was getting close to successfully cutting the creature away from Frank. Chloe was getting a little bored looking through old deployment records for Frank. As she subconsciously brought her, bulky, suit clad-arm up to lean her head on, she almost upset the container of slime that was sitting on the counter next to her. “Oh!” She caught it as it wobbled around and gently set it back down.

Chloe looked at the clear slime sitting in the tube. “You cause way too much trouble. I wish I’d never found you.” She mumbled under her breath. As she remembered what it caused before in this very room, she thought of something. “It’s not glowing anymore!” She said loudly.

“What was that?” Evie turned around.

“This tube was glowing earlier!” Chloe spun back to look at the computer.

“Yeah… I saw David testing different lasers on it and that’s what happened afterwards.”

“What if ultraviolet light isn’t the only thing that breaks down the slime? What if the creatures need the slime and beta or gamma particles also destroy it? From the computer record, it doesn’t look like they got around to testing those on the slime.”

“So, ingesting the Sodium-22 in Frank’s blood would start breaking down its slime? Or stop it from making more?” Evie pondered the idea slowly. “Maybe…”

Chloe turned back to Evie with a hint of excitement in her voice. “That would explain why it took so long for the creature to be affected. It wasn’t getting hurt until all its slime was gone. Does it look like the creature uses the slime?” Chloe wondered.

“It could be. There are some odd pores on the parasite’s surface where it might release the slime… I won’t know until I can pull this thing out of him and try to fully dissect it.”

“And, if the parasites do use the slime maybe we could use ultraviolet light to…”

“…see if somebody has one in them because it glows!” Evie finished, getting more excited as she went. “That’s a great idea Chloe!”

“Well, it only works if the creatures need the slime.” Chloe added a little sheepishly.

“It’s something we can think about. That’s better than nothing.” Evie smiled. “Why don’t you get the UV lights I use from the other…”

“Hey guys? I think Lucy’s waking up!” Wash shouted in from the other room. Evie turned around and Chloe looked up to see what he was talking about. As they did, the door to sick bay slid open. All eyes turned to face the new visitor.

May walked into the room.