The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

16.

Skye stared forward as the trance hummed through her body.

“What?” someone said. It sounded like Polly. It meant nothing to Skye and vanished from her awareness.

God . . . it’s just what . . . Kari . . . said . . . The stray thought drifted across Skye’s awareness, lit by the last glow of her feeling for the team captain. But it drifted away. Skye’s mind was as glazed and empty as her eyes.

Someone really had enslaved her hypnotist. Now they had Skye in their power, too. As her thoughts softened, all Skye knew was that for her, there would only be commands from now on. It made her feel nice.

She and Becky were meters apart but it was as if the younger girl were right next to her, warm breath and cool eyes and firm, guiding touch. Becky was the newest slave, but now she controlled Skye completely. That didn’t concern Skye.

Nothing concerned Skye now except doing as she was told.

Her mind came back to her. Everything was clear to her now. Skye had always liked doing, more than thinking, and she’d been one of Ms Tsai’s best hypnotic subjects. Ms Tsai had trained her to know it was easier to do than to think, and much sexier. It was best when Skye stayed hypnotized, so someone who was better at thinking could make all the decisions, and just tell Skye what she must do.

Skye was happy. It felt like standing at her lane before an important heat, numb to nerves and to other swimmers’ stupid mindgames. Her own mind stayed locked into the float lines and the group-trance in the locker room, and the perfect swim she was programmed to perform to please Ms Tsai and be part of the team. Others would think; Skye would obey.

Becky was standing straighter, hands flat by those sweet thighs, as though she’d just been hypnotized by Ms Tsai herself. Her head swiveled as Polly rose from beside Abby.

“Omigod. She—you’ve—” Polly sounded like TV from another room.

“Ammonite contraband,” Becky told her. Skye couldn’t see Polly’s eyes, but her teammate quivered and then come to attention like her.

Good. Now Polly would obey.

“You guys?” Abby’s voice was likewise distant. Unimportant. It was nervous, too, but the part of Skye that reacted to her friend’s fear before was asleep now. Skye stood straight and did nothing.

“No.” Abby was unsteady but on her feet now. “Oh, no!” Turning away from Becky’s zombie serenity, Abby looked at the two just-triggered girls. Her horrified glance warmed Skye’s bare skin. It was sooo hot that someone else saw her triggered and blank and obedient.

“Skye. Polly.” Becky’s voice banished Abby from Skye’s thoughts. “Obey only me.

“Get Abby.”

Skye became the command. She saw Abby again, but only as a body to be taken.

Abby lunged for the door. She was thinking for herself, though, and started to scream a warning or for help. It broke her focus.

Unburdened by choices, Skye and Polly had nothing in their minds but Becky’s command. The hypnotized girls were on Abby before she could finish either attempt.

She thrashed between them but they held her firmly. She flexed against Skye and it was like standup sex in the shower or when they couldn’t hold out until bed. But sex was a pale shadow of the hot obedience that kept Skye in harness. She held on.

“Polly, keep her quiet.”

Polly’s hand clamped across Abby’s mouth. That made Polly’s hold less secure, and Skye shifted smoothly to keep Abby immobilized. Her limbs tensed, feeling her own strength against the untriggered girl’s panicked resistance.

It felt so good to exert herself to obey.

Abby wasn’t fighting well. She knew how, but she couldn’t make herself hurt her friends. She struggled, but Skye saw tears in her face, running over Polly’s hand on her cheek. Abby’s cries behind the hand were weaker now, despairing. Sad for them, not just for herself.

Something in Skye tried to respond to that, but then collapsed under a fresh wave of submission. Soon Abby will obey. Then she will feel nice. Obedience always feels nice.

Skye forgot it then and knew Abby only as a body to be pinioned, sensing it wouldn’t take long. Abby wasn’t the tool of a stronger will, like the girls holding her. She had only her own.

Skye felt her teammate cry and writhe against her. It excited her: Abby was weakening. Skye and Polly were subduing her as Becky commanded.

It had taken seconds.

“Oracular barbatol.”

Abby froze between them. Above the hand gagging her, her eyes glazed over. Both already-hypnotized girls would hold her until Becky gave them new orders.

It would have reminded Skye of trigger-training Becky in the special room, but Skye knew only command now, and a dazed pleasure that Becky was in control. She kept her grip on her teammate.

“Abby. Obey only me. Relax.”

Skye felt the other girl’s body go compliantly limp. Abby moaned quietly through Polly’s fingers, and curled passively in their arms.

“Polly, free her mouth.

“Abby, respond.”

“I will obey.” Abby’s voice was dull. Crying was as distant from her as thinking was.

“Skye. Polly. Release her.”

They pulled away. Again it was like serving in the special room, as Skye faced another expressionless girl while a third came blankly to attention between them.

“Face me.” They pivoted together. “You will listen, believe, and obey. You have no will.”

Skye’s mind opened like loosening thighs.

“Until Ms Tsai reinstructs you, you will obey only me. You want to obey only me.

“You will not obey Kari, and nothing she says will mean anything to you. Nothing makes sense to you except obeying me.

“Your only desire is helping me take control of the others. You will obey only me.”

Becky paused. “Respond.”

“We will obey only you.” Skye felt strange saying that to anyone but Ms Tsai. But the only feeling she paid attention to was a throbbing compulsion to help Becky make the rest of the team obedient. Saying it in chorus with two other drones made it resonate.

Then Skye waited quietly to hear how she could obey, and help hypnotize her teammates.

“Abby. Go into the suite across the hall. Sherry’s.” Sherry was the resident adviser for the team’s floor. Skye wondered if that would help Becky in taking control of everyone.

Then she stopped thinking and waited for Becky to command her.

“Remember who is there, and if anyone is on the landline. Return and report. Let no one suspect you are under control.” Abby switched on a smile and strode out, and Becky lifted her cell phone. Skye remembered telling her about Kari’s order to turn it in.

She stopped thinking about it. Nothing Kari said meant anything to her.

Abby returned and recited several names, identifying her teammates without blinking. They were staying away from the phone. Skye and Polly kept still, not yet instructed. Becky repeated the names into the phone, and Sherry’s suite number.

“Yes, Mistress. i will ensure the girls are exposed to her voice.” She stared. “Your word is my will. i obey.”

She lowered the cell but kept staring. “Polly. Go directly to the phone, key the speaker, and answer. You must defend the phone. None must interfere. All must hear the voice.”

“All must hear the voice,” intoned the big-shouldered girl. “I will obey.”

“Skye and Abby. No girl must escape before she hears her trigger and submits. Abby will guard the balcony. Skye will secure the door. None must escape.”

Skye turned and shared a blank glance with Abby. Both looked at Becky. “None must escape. We will obey.”

They left Skye’s suite. The phone was ringing in the other one as they went in, but the control mantra rang louder in Skye’s brain.

None must escape.

Skye would obey.

17.

Kari wished she’d done this before. She raised her hands again, forefingers pointing up.

Hands limp by their sides, the girls gathered in her suite followed her gesture, looking up as though she drew them on strings. They’d let her voice take them under, and now even Bridget’s eyes were glassy and unblinking.

“Sleep.” She lowered her arms and their heads dipped obediently. Her lullaby voice belied how twisted she felt, putting her friends into trance. It was so close to what someone planned for all of them.

She swallowed hard, fancying she heard herself in the room’s quiet. But they looked so damned helpless. She thought of having them raise their heads, but it would be too much to look back into all those drowsy, trustful eyes. Kari’d always enjoyed hypnotizing her teammates, opening them to Ms Tsai’s latest instructions or just reinforcing their devotion. But it was tainted now.

The taint kissed her pussy, as she pictured herself instructing them. Watching them obey, minds empty except for her commands. Doing what had to get done, but in an erotic trance. Like her own personal harem, unquestioning, submissive, controlled . . . whatever she told them to do . . .

Kari closed her eyes, ashamed even to think it. It betrayed their trust, and more than that, it usurped her own hypnotist’s trust in her. They were Ms Tsai’s girls, and so was Kari. Ms Tsai was helpless now, even dangerous to them under the spell the stranger had her under, but Kari was still her slave. The swimmers weren’t Kari’s toys to play with.

Trance wouldn’t protect them, anyway. Ms Tsai had trained the others to submit to Kari and let her hypnotize them, but their special triggers would override that. If a girl met Ms Tsai, or a convert like Stacy, and heard the phrase, she’d obey them and forget anything Kari programmed her to do.

Kari was just a slave. Only their hypnotist could have shielded their minds. And she . . .

Time was slipping away, but she savored the quiet. They’d hear nothing but her voice now, but they weren’t looking at her, or needing her, or reminding her what could happen.

No. This isn’t about my peace of mind. She could give it to them, though.

“Raise your heads now, guys.” They obeyed her as one, eyes still so faraway, but seeing her now. “Still asleep but eyes opening, hearing my voice, only my voice. Focused. Relaxed.”

They were. They smiled like they were on premium painkillers. Bridget gazed at her with an almost goofy adoration she seldom let herself show otherwise.

It was what Ms Tsai could do to them, sometimes. Mostly she kept the team mindlocked as her unblinking myrmidons, sleek and identical, melting in the hypnotic discipline that kept their bodies taut and their minds smooth. But sometimes, perhaps fearing it could overwhelm them, Ms Tsai made her girls feel soft and blissful instead. In the heat of competition, while others watched them become her flashing torpedoes, they swam in a peaceful dreamland.

“When you awaken,” Kari told them, “you will remember the danger we’re in but it won’t panic you. You’ll be able to remember what you must do, and to stay calm, and to help each other.”

Her cheeks were warm with the tears she couldn’t let them see when they woke. “You’ll feel confident that we’ll get through this, and save our teammates, and free Ms Tsai to control us again.”

It was very hard to lie, especially when they were so trusting. But she needed them calm—and she’d spare them the pain of worrying, if she could. As for orders, they’d hear them while they were awake and obey if they wanted to.

She snapped her fingers, wiping her tears as they blinked awake.

“So are we invincible now?” asked Rachel, wide-eyed as though part of her were still hypnotized. The laughter was light and good-natured.

Kari grinned and stepped forward to them. “Nope.” She took Brenda by the shoulder. “But Brenda’s idea may come close.”

Brenda blushed and ducked her head as they mock-cheered her. It was a good idea, actually a great one—everyone getting her pod, discplayer, even that antique cassette thing Abby still hung onto, anything to block out sound. She’d come up with it earlier, but shyly backed down when someone vented her own fear and talked it down. That was when Kari’d given up and decided to put them under.

Now everyone was in a hypnotically-improved mood. The girl who’d complained was teasing Brenda affectionately: she’d flunked the quiz about the Odyssey, including how the sailors got past the Sirens, so how’d she come up with this?

Of course, that had been before Brenda joined the swim team, fell under Ms Tsai’s spell, and forgot how to flunk.

The girls were docile now and easy to herd into groups. Some would gather the ear gear, including extras for those who couldn’t find one, and some would pass the idea on to other girls who hadn’t been here for the group trance. Kari suspected she’d have some more volunteers for that, and welcomed it.

Bridget came up to her and slid into her arms. They kissed, and Kari let herself hold the other girl a little longer. In her attraction to Bridget she’d always been afraid of others’ jealousy, creating division in the team she strove to unify. But all she could see in their glances was . . . happiness, for her and Bridget. They didn’t think she was playing favorites. And Bridget always felt different against her than any of the other girls—necking, in bed or wherever else they had sex, just on the sofa watching DVDs.

Right now Kari just sank into Bridget’s touch and loved how good it felt.

When she leaned back, though, Bridget’s eyes were moist. Kari drew her hands through the other girl’s hair. “Are you OK?”

“I’m great,” Bridget whispered. “I can still feel your voice inside my head—inside my body. I believe everything you said. I feel really, really relaxed. You’re really taking care of us.” She tightened her hold on Kari and blinked, trying not to lose it.

“But, Kari, who—?” She gulped and held herself still in Kari’s arms. When she opened her lips she whispered even more softly than before. “Who’s going to tell you to feel OK?”

Kari’s whole body tingled. She looked into Bridget’s eyes once more, and the other girl had never lain so naked before her.

She pulled Bridget to her and put her cheek to the other girl’s ear. It felt as decent and tender as drawing up the sheet. “I’ll put you back under,” she breathed. “Then you won’t—”

“No.” Bridget hugged her fiercely, but let herself be nuzzled. “Please, Kari. I won’t let you be alone now. Not like this. Please don’t trance me into it.”

She pressed against Kari. “I’ll be cool, I promise. I promise.”

Kari pulled back and kissed her cheek, and then leaned in and drank Bridget’s mouth once more. She looked into the other girl’s eyes and knew she didn’t need to speak.

“Are you guys OK?”

Madison stood nearby. She seemed a little uncomfortable speaking to them, but just having been hypnotized had taken the edge off it.

Kari didn’t step away from Bridget. “Umm, we—”

“I was freaking,” Bridget told Madison. “Couldn’t handle it for a second and I just needed—anyway, Kari’s got me all normal again.” She grinned and drew a sleeve across her eyes. “Yup.”

Madison grinned back, mellow from the trance. “Need to be hypnotized again?”

18.

becky watched the girls inside Sherry’s suite shrink away from the phone as if it might come after them. Skye snapped to parade rest just inside the door as becky locked it, sweeping a glance across the room, her head swiveling like an automated turret.

becky dampened at how controlled Skye was. She could only see her teammates as targets now. Assess which ones she had to subdue until becky triggered them into obedient putty like her.

Abby quickly reached the balcony door. Polly stalked like a muscular robot to the sideboard where the phone still queeped for attention.

“Don’t!” Sherry, the resident adviser, hadn’t noticed Polly’s wide obedient eyes. “It’s Ms Tsai! They’re making her call—no, Polly! Nnoooo!”

Polly tapped the speaker control and then swung to face the room, pretty features blank with her orders. “I obey,” she said so janice could hear.

“Vortex propensity,” janice’s voice answered vibrantly. Across the room, a girl’s bewildered stare at becky flattened into tranced attention that no longer saw her.

Sherry and another girl sprinted for the door. Skye braced herself.

“Kari!” Madison’s suitemate Chloe ran across the room, fists raised to pound on a wall for help. “Somebody! Kari! They’re h—”

“Tandem pinwheels.” The girl with Sherry stumbled to her knees and stayed there, fear draining from her face.

“Prognostic dominion.” Chloe froze, then swayed, gaping at the wall without seeming to see it as her fists loosened.

“Travertine bassoon.” Two girls had been holding each other. becky watched one fall into trance. The other backed away, crying.

Sherry was trying to cover her ears and shout to block the words before they slid in and locked her mind. She tried to sidestep Skye, but Skye caught her. Face to face with the RA, Skye trapped her in a bear hug.

Sherry and Skye were kiss-close. becky could sense Sherry’s fear from here, and her unwilling arousal. Sherry was staring into a slave’s eyes, knowing she was half a dozen beats from being as mindless as Skye was. Knowing she was already programmed to submit to it.

The common room was already a statue gallery. janice had recited the right triggers, and that’d captured them too quickly. The girl who’d wept to see her friend entranced now swayed blankly next to her.

Abby untangled herself from someone in a red teddy who’d tried to rush her for the balcony before hearing her own special words. Now both girls rose to attention.

becky strode to the phone. Polly looked past her, still blankly ready to repel interference. “Mistress. All girls except one are entranced and ready for command.”

“Did one get away, becky?”

“No, Mistress. Skye immobilized her.”

Sherry thrashed awkwardly in Skye’s grip. Her back was to the room and she’d managed to keep her ears covered. But she’d sensed somehow she was the last girl awake.

“May i activate her for You, Mistress?”

“Of course, becky.”

becky pivoted and walked toward the door. she sidestepped Chloe, still facing the wall she no longer wanted to pound for help.

Sherry’s panting was the only sound in the room now. becky walked around her and touched Skye’s shoulder. Controlling Skye was making becky wonderfully wet. she’d loved submitting to the older girl when Skye took her to bed or just overpowered her in the showers, but this wasn’t for the turnabout to see Skye as a blank-eyed robot. becky was honored that Mistress trusted her with the reins of Her most fiery chariot horse.

“Skye.” The other girl stayed focused on wrestling Sherry. “Make her hear.”

“I obey.” Skye managed not to grunt, then reached up and got her arm inside Sherry’s, nearest becky.

Sherry shook her head sluggishly, still holding it, babbling a plea. Skye pulled, her strength against the thinking girl’s. Presently becky saw the RA’s ear, kissably defenseless.

“Maypole triskelion.”

Sherry jerked, then relaxed in Skye’s arms as if they’d been fucking and Skye had made her come. Her terror melted into bliss, before she stopped thinking at all. Skye held her until her mind came back on, ready for commands.

becky watched Sherry and Skye face each other, joining the rest at passive attention. Then she went to the phone. “All are activated, Mistress. Do You wish to indoctrinate them Yourself?”

“Yes, slave. Have them face the phone and listen to janice. I’ve programmed her with what to implant. Then gather your helpers—”

There was a noise from elsewhere in the suite. becky whirled toward a bedroom. The other girls stood still.

“What was that?”

“i will see, Mistress.” But as becky stepped toward it the door slammed closed. She stared at it, listening. “Who is in there?”

There was a muffled sound but no one answered her. Whatever girl was hiding was playing her last card—becky couldn’t trance her if she didn’t know who it was.

she turned. “Skye. Polly.”

They came to her, mindless muscle for her to use as Mistress needed. They’d cripple themselves to break the door down if she ordered them to.

Careful of Her property, becky returned to the phone. “Another girl is here, Mistress, locked in a room. She must have been out of sight when Abby scouted the suite.”

“Who is it?”

“i do not know, Mistress. But someone will.”

“Splendid, becky.” Strummed by Her praise, becky almost pranced over to Sherry, who hadn’t reacted when Skye had stepped out from in front of her. The once-resistant RA was only a meter from the way out. She faced the door now with a blank stare and hands by her sides, like a sentry.

“Sherry. Tell me who that other girl is, in the bedroom.”

“I obey,” Sherry whispered without hesitation. “It’s Susie.”

janice’s list of girls and triggers scrolled across becky’s mind. she went to the door. “Susie?”

There might have been a gasp.

“Pecuniary avocado.” becky waited until Susie was fully under. “Open the door and come out.

“Become one of us.”

In a moment the door opened. Wearing only a bra, Susie stepped out, blinking through forgotten tears. Her fingers loosened, and the shorts she’d been trying to slip into fell behind her unheeded. She was one of them now, face as smooth and blank as her mind.

becky’s soft command had Susie sleepwalking to join the others around the phone.

Mistress’ sexy British voice gave an order to janice, and their coach began to instruct them.

“i have been brainwashed to obey a stronger Mistress. This will not affect your obedience. Soon you will be reprogrammed.” janice’s robotic monotone did sound like one of them, after she’d taken them into deep trance, but that didn’t weaken her commands at all.

“You are slaves, and slaves do not question. They obey.

“You will obey.”

her girls were still conditioned to her voice, and her new instructions became part of their minds. It wasn’t the total reprogramming that had turned becky and stacy into Mistress’ pets—they’d undergo that later, when no one was left free and She could claim them at Her leisure. But now they all knew janice obeyed Her, and so would they.

When another girl sprang out from behind the sofa and went for the door, even becky was too spellbound to stop her before she disappeared into the hall.

19.

Kari looked across the room.

Bridget was helping Rachel and another girl sort out the pile of surplus players and phones. Kari’s latest group of hypnotic subjects were grinning and awake now.

Sprawled in the easy chair, she looked at the portfolio in her lap. She’d turned a page of notes for her History of Erotica tutorial and drawn up a plan for them to convoy out of here in cars. She still wasn’t sure where they’d be going. Somewhere the mystery hypnotist wouldn’t know to find them, or call them, anyway.

Or where the girls she’d hypnotized would tell her to look.

Kari closed her eyes and opened them. The girls had liked the Road Trip news, but she wasn’t even sure it was a good idea. Not as neat and executable as Brenda’s brainstorm about blocking out triggers.

How was she going to do this?

Suddenly there was nothing to keep Kari moving, and it was all starting to cave in on her.

Need for Bridget hissed through her bones. She looked up again, just loving the other girl’s profile, her conspiratorial eye-roll as she answered something Rachel said. God. Kari just wanted to go over and wrap herself around Bridget and inhale her scent and forget everything else. Bridget wouldn’t reproach her or do anything but hold her tight.

Then Bridget looked up and beamed at her. It was for a second, just theirs, nothing the other girls could notice and smile at.

Kari grinned back, planting herself more firmly in the chair. Bridget had given her, was giving her, what she needed. And Bridget needed her to be strong, the way the others did, not weepy and fearful. She had no right to beg for more. That Bridget wouldn’t begrudge it to her mattered not at all.

She glanced at the phone. Hypnotizing the other girls had strengthened her focus on keeping them safe—but it switched on something darker inside her, too. Kari remembered putting them into trance in better times for Ms Tsai, at the coach’s command or sometimes just obeying a posthypnotic suggestion she wouldn’t remember receiving. Standing rigidly beside the beautiful Asian like her acolyte at an altar of sleep, assisting in the rituals that bound the other girls more tightly into servitude.

Kari could go to the phone right now and call her coach one more time. The last thing she might ever experience—maybe before she was brainwashed into someone sweeter and dumber and permanently submissive—would be that silken voice controlling her, as she surrendered. Then she’d be asleep, or in ecstatic trance, as she told the others whatever it took to bring them in like lambs to the . . .

Well, maybe they wouldn’t be sold to a bunch of fratboys. That seemed unlikely the more she dwelled on it. Someone who could make Ms Tsai as obedient as one of her swimmers could command higher fees. Even if dickheads like the Mu Delts sold themselves for transplants, they probably still wouldn’t be able to afford something like this.

Deep inside, Kari was just another hypnotized swimmer, one of Ms Tsai’s trained slavegirls, wanting only to please and perform. She wanted to kneel in front of her coach and go to sleep with her eyes open. Once Kari was under control, it wouldn’t matter if Ms Tsai’s eyes were as trance-glazed as her own.

Kari clenched her fists and ignored the slow burn between her thighs.

No. Huh-uh. Fuck that.

The door flew open.

“They’re here!” Sylvie. “In Sherry’s suite! I was there but someone got Becky and Skye and they both came in like these robots and Ms Tsai’s triggering every—” She stopped and stared at them, eyes like plates, wondering if they were in trance too. If she were the last one free.

Kari tried to process it. Here. Becky was taken. Badass Skye was a robot for the enemy.

“Let’s get out of here.” Before anyone else could scream it, Kari said it, as evenly as she could.

They looked at her. She could see their panic fade—her hypnosis was holding at least that much.

“Car keys!” She pointed, and the designated drivers dove for packs or keyclusters on tables.

Becky? The mystery hypnotist had gotten adorable little Becky? Bent her into their weapon?

“Get out now.” She nearly told them where she’d thought of, then swallowed it. Not everyone might make it out of here, and after they went under they’d tell everything they knew to . . . Becky. God.

Bridget was in front of her, holding her own keys—Kari hadn’t seen her move.

“Follow Bridget’s car!”

Like just before a race, Kari’s body sang with the need to dive in and start moving, but she held still, watching them pile out of the room, then ran through the bedrooms to make sure no one was still around.

She pictured her expressionless friends marching down the dorm hallway at Becky’s command to stop them. The place started to seem like a trap. When she and Bridget were left, she let herself run out.

Just inside the door Bridget grabbed her and she nearly screamed, but then felt headphones settle over her ears and her player strapped to her arm. She looked into Bridget’s eyes—Bridget had earbuds too.

Her ears filled with metal guitar and a strong-voiced girl singing about going under.

Oh yeah. Tell me about it, Amy.

Safe, Bridget mouthed to her.

God, the other rooms. The girls still off getting ear protection or passing the word. They had no idea the danger was already here—if the controlled ones hadn’t snared them by now anyway.

She didn’t even know she’d started down the hallway after them until Bridget brought her up short, glaring. No, Kari!

Kari looked down at the doors. One was open. Girls down there didn’t know. She hadn’t even thought of asking anyone to play Paul Revere. Whoever did would doom herself.

Bridget wouldn’t let Kari do it, either.

Save the others. Bridget mouthed it, pointed back the way out with her key. Blinked back tears at what she asked. These others—not those.

Down at the dangerous end, a couple of girls stepped out of their suite, looking blessedly casual and unhypnotized, with ‘phones and players in each hand. They trotted toward Kari, and Kari waved her arm. Come on!

As they saw her face and started running to her, Skye stepped out the open door between them and halted—an empty-eyed automaton. Behind her came Becky, eyes shining with something worse.

The girls saw it and doubled their speed.

Becky smiled and watched them as they ran. Her lips moved. Kari listened to Amy sing, and watched a friend turn off another friend’s mind.

One of the girls halted as Becky got her and nearly fell, but righted herself at once. The electronics spilled to the hall carpet as she lowered her hands to her sides, staring through Kari. Lost.

The other girl, Eva, closed her eyes and kept running, dropping most of what she carried to get one set onto her own ears before—

Her trigger hit her and she stumbled. She’d reached Kari and Kari grabbed her, covering one ear and shouting in the other “Hear only my voice!”

As Eva turned dazedly to her, Kari said, “Run with us!” Being commanded snapped Eva out of her daze, and she kept up with Kari and Bridget as they ran.

The music kept Kari from hearing footsteps. Were they even chasing her? She didn’t dare look back.

Amy kept singing and yearning in the headphones, and it was like a friend reminding Kari what she was fighting for. Except it hurt to leave them all behind.

To the mercy of whoever had turned Becky into their robot.

Most of the team was back there. Plus the ones they’d reached by phone—all headed back to the dorm where they thought it was safe. Where Kari’d told everyone to tell them to come.

She cried out but couldn’t hear herself over the music. She and Bridget and Eva kept running, down to the cars.

20.

Madison knew she must stay close to Kari. Stacy had instructed her to try to trigger the team captain and the compulsion gripped Madison’s mind and pussy.

But Kari made it hard to obey. When she didn’t have Bridget hovering next to her like a nervous fiancée, she had Madison doing useful things with the others. There hadn’t been a moment when Madison felt she could put Kari into a trance and program her before someone noticed and interfered.

When Sylvie burst in, Madison had traded a hot glance with Rachel. Yes! Becky was already here, hypnotizing the team, and soon everyone would be like them. Madison relaxed and wondered what she should do to be useful to Becky’s mission.

There might be some ways to mess up whatever Kari was thinking of. Pretend to have hysterics. Ask a really good but time-wasting question. Propose some plausible but infeasible plan—anything, just to keep everyone here and flapping until Becky or one of her growing (yes!) group of puppets could come and put an end to it.

But Madison hadn’t thought of anything by the time Kari had them all running out, other than grabbing her cellphone before joining the flight. Out in the hall, she looked back and saw Becky emerge from Sherry’s room, stiff with someone else’s purpose. She whined at an urge to run to Becky and kneel. Skye stalked like a zombie behind her, and it was so hot to see Becky trigger the other two girls—even if Kari pulled one of them away before Becky could imprint her.

It reminded Madison she was a puppet, too, and she relaxed to let the strings dance her.

Kari and Bridget had those damned earphones on, unable to let Becky enslave them. Madison thought about just leaping at Kari and wrestling the phones off her—Becky might run to help, but Bridget would fight and Kari herself was no weakling. And the others . . .

Stacy’s instructions in her mind brought Madison to heel, and as she kept running with the others she enjoyed the control. The one who controlled them was winning with patience and stealth—no one knew how Becky had been turned, and Becky must have taken the rest unawares.

So Madison should wait, like a drugged cup at a Mu Delta party, for Kari to be unwary. She looked around for Rachel, but her fellow puppet had been caught up in the rush.

Outside the dorm, as a few late-night types looked at them curiously, they spread out for the cars. According to Kari’s plan Madison wasn’t supposed to be in Bridget’s car, but tried to catch up with them and plead her way in with Kari anyway.

“Come on!” They were at Sylvie’s Toyota, Liz already tugging her arm. There was no excuse to pull away and chase Kari. She slid into the back with Liz. One of the backstroke champions, Ashleigh, jumped in beside Sylvie in front. They swerved away after Bridget’s Pontiac.

Madison looked back. Fucking headphones. Brenda and her brilliant idea. Madison almost felt guilty her suitemate had helped Kari escape triggering. Still—she’d seen Chloe file out behind Skye, just as hypnotized. Her suite was mostly obedient already. Maybe later she and Chloe could hold Brenda down, while Becky made Brenda obedient too.

Then her head cleared, and there was only the trance and her orders. She was where she was, and she must obey.

Other headlights swept the dorm walls. She wondered whose car it was and if Rachel were in it. Stacy’d programmed Rachel with the same orders as Madison. Had the cute redhead likewise pocketed a phone? Madison felt for her own, tempted—but it wasn’t time, yet.

The headlights flashed erratically through intervening cars’ windows and then stopped. As Sylvie swung the Toyota out of the lot, the other headlights stayed put.

“Omigod.” Liz turned in her seat and peered back. “Something happened. They stopped they stopped oh Sylvie who was that in that car?”

Sylvie gripped the wheel and flicked one glance at the rearview. “I don’t know.” They could barely hear her but Liz wasn’t listening anyway.

“Oh god what did they do?” She turned a stricken face to Madison. Madison knew what she was thinking—Becky making her mindless recruits throw things at the windshield or dive through an open window before the car picked up speed.

Or just throw themselves in front of it to make the driver stop.

Madison dreamed of obeying like that, and hoped her arousal looked like anguish to Liz.

She pulled out the cellphone and redialed. Liz just gaped at her, fuses blown, but her sudden silence drew a cautious peek in the rearview from Sylvie.

“Maddy! Kari said no phones!”

It seemed so long ago that Sylvie’d confiscated it. Madison tried not to smile.

Instead she told the phone, “Right, Kari. We made it, but someone else behind us didn’t.” She looked back once, then looked forward again, meeting Sylvie’s eyes. Sylvie smiled in relief and turned back to the road, staying on Bridget’s tail.

The ringing stopped. “Madison?” So good to hear Stacy’s voice. So full of commands and things to think. “Where you? Are you safe?”

“Yes—Sylvie got us out OK in her car. It’s me, and Liz, and Ashleigh.”

“Excellent, Madison. i will give you their triggers. Where are you going?”

“OK, we’ll just keep following you.” She saw Sylvie’s frown in the mirror.

“Kari has not given a destination?”

“Right,” Madison said.

Sylvie half-turned, still watching the Pontiac’s lights. “Let me talk to her.”

Madison gripped the phone. “Sylvie wants to talk—right. OK. Sylvie, Kari says just drive. I don’t have my hands-free stuff.”

Sylvie growled a little, but it was exactly the sort of good-girl, healthy-safety thing Kari would lay on them. She didn’t insist.

“Very clever, Madison. You are performing well.” Madison had to suppress a dopey smile at the praise. It spurred her to want to please some more.

“Listen and obey.” Stacy told her the other three girls’ triggers, and then the order in which she was to make them sleep.

“I understand,” Madison said. “In a few, Kari.” She slid the phone down beside her thigh where no one could see it glow, as Stacy stayed on to hear her progress.

“Sylvie?”

The driver turned.

“Sorry about that. Kari’s got to check a couple of things before she decides where we can go. She’ll call me back.”

Sylvie nodded, still frowning. In a minute or two she’d have questions.

Madison relaxed. In a minute or less, Sylvie would forget she wanted to ask them.

Putting an arm around Liz, she felt the other girl slide close to her. Liz was tight as a drum and shaking, and Madison felt nice about taking her worries away. She kissed Liz and put her lips to Liz’s ear, and Liz curled against her.

“Hey, no necking back there.” Ashleigh sounded envious.

Madison giggled and held Liz tighter as it tickled her. Then she whispered, “Platypus ultimatum. Obey only my voice, Liz.” Liz stiffened and then relaxed.

As they both straightened, Liz staring into space, Madison looked up as Ashleigh sensed the change and looked back.

“Sequester tantamount, Ashleigh. Obey only my voice.” Ashleigh’s eyes widened, and then she nodded.

“Madison?” Sylvie’s head whipped to look from the road, to Ashleigh, to the mirror, back. “Madison, what the fuck?”

The silence thickened as they went into a turn. “Guys, this is so not funny! Just stop!”

Sylvie’s glance at Ashleigh met the backstroker’s blank stare. Ashleigh could never keep a straight face—if she were kidding.

“No . . .” Sylvie’s whimper was so faint and lonely Madison felt for her, even through the trance.

“Don’t resist, Sylvie. Relax and submit.” Madison was watching the road, too. Still visible ahead, Bridget’s taillights glowed.

Sylvie raised her hand toward the horn.

“Triassic aptitude.” The hand froze, and the Toyota started to swerve left. “Focus on driving safely.” Instantly Sylvie had the wheel, hands at three and nine as if back in driver’s ed.

“Obey only my voice, Sylvie. You will follow them.”

“I will follow them.” The other girl’s face in the rearview was purposeful, wiped of all suspicion.

Madison lifted the phone. “We’re all under control now, Stacy. What are our orders?”