The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

26.

“No.”

Nancy watched Krista’s face as she heard Beth’s drugged glass clink onto the coffee table.

She sensed Beth hadn’t tasted it after all. But Krista was too thoroughly under their Mistress’ control to betray disappointment. Too brainwashed even to feel it, perhaps—just waiting to see if she could still do Her bidding some other way.

After a moment Nancy stopped gazing up at her domme and turned back to Beth. Her lover sat forward on the chair, no longer quite as expressionless as before. It was easy not to look at the pale amber in the glass in front of her.

“Not to true love.” Beth ran a hand through her hair. Nancy had seen her do that when she was perplexed. “Not when I don’t know what it is.”

Even more than hearing that, it hurt more to see the gesture, the same way it hurt to kneel here bare-breasted at someone else’s feet, in someone else’s collar, while Beth watched. But all that hurt was like a lovebite on Nancy’s thigh, just making her more open. Readier to be used by the woman whose hand was on her, and by the Mistress Who owned both of them.

She shifted where she knelt. The boots were slick under her thighs, all the way up to where the hotpants were painted across her ass. What little she wore was so much more sexual than just kneeling naked. She let herself sigh, lolling her head back slightly.

Beth saw her arousal and held still.

“I made a mistake,” Beth said. “Several, in fact.

“Coming here wasn’t one.” She stood, still looking only at Nancy. She seemed calm, but Nancy saw the little telltales around her mouth, the blood in her ears. They tore at her more than tears would.

Beth looked down at her a moment longer and then left the apartment without another word.

Krista touched her and Nancy turned to her again. Krista studied her face. “You did well, slave.”

Nancy smiled and moved a little. The praise was like warmth over ice. Feeling as lost as she did, it reassured her to know that she’d pleased Mistress and let Her do the thinking for her.

Krista made her stand and slide the hotpants off. She was sent to lock the door, and found herself half-hoping Beth would ring again to come back in, to see her booted and collared—and dripping. But there was no knock, or even the sense that Beth was outside in the hall, hesitating or listening or just gathering herself.

Nancy went back to stand before Krista. It felt intensely slavish, and more functional than kneeling.

At Krista’s order she took Beth’s untasted drink and poured it down the kitchen drain, rinsing the glass. Part of her nearly wept with relief that Beth hadn’t wanted it—even as she wanted to stroke herself, imagining Beth getting drowsier, losing her train of thought, trying to resist the drug. Succumbing . . .

But clearer in her mind was Krista, focused only on pleasing Mistress, who hadn’t blinked at letting Beth go. If it had been necessary to take her, Krista would have. Nancy would have done whatever Krista told her to, to help.

So her domme, whom their Owner had left with a clearer mind and the semblance of choice, knew this was no great loss to Her. It concerned Nancy no more than that, as a slave being trained. She relaxed and accepted it, and walked back to the living room.

It kept thrilling her, coming to attention in her own home to await orders. She fixed her eyes on the end of a bookshelf.

“Slave.”

“Yes, Krista.” She looked only at the bookshelf.

“Zombie time.”

Nancy slipped deeper. Her body felt heavier, but it was easy to stand still.

Krista walked in front of her, holding a small glass ball on a dark string. As if through a long telescope, Nancy remembered seeing ones like it hanging from rearview mirrors. Drivers and passengers ignored them, not weak-minded enough to fall under the spell of their dazzle. Not weak like her.

All Nancy could feel was slick joy that, like her collar, this thing that had such power over her was not elegant, but cheap. Cheap as a bead.

“Watch the crystal.” Krista raised it to just above eye level and began to swing it. On Isle Dormignonne, Nancy had been conditioned to slip into trance just by seeing such a bauble. She’d been freed from the conditioning but she remembered it, and it was easy and fun to surrender to it again.

Nancy locked her eyes on the little sphere as though she had no choice, and soon it was hard to tell. She didn’t try. Instead she relaxed under the massaging sensation it gave her to follow it back and forth. Krista had positioned her so that one of the room lights shone through the glass ball into her eyes, and she felt that blunting her mind, too.

“You cannot look away.”

Nancy heard herself repeat it.

“Each pass of the crystal makes you sleepier, more obedient, more deeply hypnotized.” Krista’s voice matched the cadence of the swing, and Nancy felt it happening. As deep in trance as she already was, this ritual was intensifying her suggestibility.

Then she was deep enough that she missed some of what Krista was telling her. Her gaze was fixed now because she’d been told it would, and the crystal swept across it, back and forth.

“Zombie time.” Nancy barely felt the drop into deeper submission. The crystal was gone, but she was numb to that too.

“Slave, do you love Beth?”

“Yes.” Nancy didn’t particularly care. It was truth, and she must speak truth now.

“How did it feel to be my pet in front of her?”

“Bad. Hot. Sad. Obedient.” Nancy breathed easily and went blank again.

“If you see her again, who will she be?”

“My ex-girlfriend.” That was true, too, and mattered as little. Hearing herself say it in such a flat voice would have turned her on in a dirty way, if she’d still been awake.

“Why?”

“She didn’t dominate me.”

“What if she wants you back?”

“I don’t belong to her.”

“Whom do you belong to?”

For the first time, deep in this anesthetized dream, Nancy felt heat and meaning. “I belong only to my Mistress,” she sighed.

Krista was silent, and Nancy faded back to zombie time.

Krista snapped her fingers and Nancy blinked, still deeply hypnotized but able to pass as a thinking person. She remained passively at attention.

“Slave.”

“Yes, Krista.”

“Tomorrow you return to work.” Nancy had taken some personal days for the interview with Ms Wing and whatever followed. Like everything else, she’d told Mistress about it during the empty time.

“I will indoctrinate you for that, and select your clothing. You will be requesting more time off, for a long weekend.”

“Yes, Krista.” Nancy was eager. Word would get around that her new, openly dominant lover was carrying her off on a romantic getaway. No one would know that Krista was bringing her to the secret place where Mistress could use Her equipment to begin brainwashing Nancy in earnest.

“Concentrate, slave. Will this create serious problems that could draw concern?”

Nancy stared ahead serenely and did as she was told. It was easy to focus her thoughts when the control only let her think these few. “No, Krista. No one there is likely to suspect I am under mind control.

“They will disapprove of my leaving, and possibly of an openly submissive lifestyle. But I have been a productive worker and they will want to give me chances.”

She imagined herself smirking gleefully, but didn’t. The plan was Mistress’: Nancy was just Her tool, carrying out the sequence stamped onto her mind.

Krista reviewed more details about work, confirming that Nancy had absorbed her programming, and then led Nancy to the kitchen. Nancy fell into her submissive role and put a meal together, still in only the boots and collar. After they’d eaten and she cleaned up, she couldn’t remember what they’d had. Under the numbness, she was wildly excited—it was like the first days of love with Beth, when details like food and clothing hadn’t mattered.

Krista led her to the bedroom, and she thought intensely about Beth. Then she looked into her new, dominant girlfriend’s eyes, and remembered only what Mistress had instructed her to feel.

Nancy stopped thinking of Beth at all.

She undressed Krista while her domme stood still, letting Krista’s body arouse her as she saw more of it. Krista was slim and strong, and Nancy wanted to kiss the long muscles that protected Mistress, but she was Krista’s submissive and waited to be told. The pleasure of not pleasing herself was a lovely ache.

Krista slid against her and walked her backward to the bed, pushing her back and falling on top of her. She left the white boots on Nancy as she spread her legs, and slowly, almost sadistically pleasured Nancy with her hands and mouth and body. Krista played with her, making her beg until Nancy’s mouth was trembling and loose and her mind foggy, unable to form words.

She stepped away and Nancy lay boneless, her legs still parted, mewing to be touched again. When Krista came back to the bed she wore a strapon, and stared coldly down at Nancy as she pressed under her thighs. Her hand settled on Nancy’s cunt with the assurance of a pianist, and tapped Nancy’s clit just as her other fingers parted Nancy’s asscheeks with something cold and slick.

The lubricant tingled darkly as Krista’s fingertips swabbed it on her anus. Krista studied her eyes as the yielding fingers made way for the strapon.

Nancy gasped. She’d been used that way on Dormignonne after being taken in the slave hunt, but nothing before or since had ever invaded her ass. She’d even resisted Beth’s gentle fingering.

Now she could feel the narrow tip silently demanding admission, slick and impersonally cold with lubricant. Her ass clenched, imagining it thick and dry instead.

She stared up into Krista’s eyes, and saw only Rusalka’s. Penetrating her.

“Mistress!”

Her scream was very quiet as she thrust herself down onto it.

27.

Dreams of Dormignonne were humid and strange.

Dew’s journey into bondage was a drift into pink fog. The Others used her like sleepy flypaper to seduce more escaping Tribeswomen, and finally herded them all to the waterfall clearing. All the captives who weren’t tranquilized had been subdued with trinkets, and gave the safari girls dazed but total obedience as they were turned into their captrices’ labor force to gather the women who’d been tranquilized.

Dew found herself paired with a small, muscular drone with olive skin, carrying the back end of a pole with one of the sleepers bound to it. The expressionless drone said nothing, but they bore the unconscious girl where they were told to. The drone had already received orders, and Dew just went where she did. Watching how the brainsmoothed slave moved had Dew hypnotized well before they arrived at a small river.

Shallow-draft boats waited at the shore, and Dew and the others, moving sluggishly, loaded their drugged Tribesisters on the first and second ones. Drones at either end poled the boats away on command, and then the bead-bedecked Tribeswomen left behind formed docile lines to be loaded onto the remaining boats. Dew sprawled languidly on the padded bottom of the one she’d been pointed to and enjoyed pressing against her neighbor.

An Other laughed at her companions, and leaned down to speak to Dew and the other girl. First, Dew realized the other girl’s tinsel necklace was fascinating, even as the other girl’s eyes locked onto the beads between her own breasts. Then all they could think of was sex, and writhed amid the other drowsy captives as they sought each other’s pussies.

Trinkets and fucking left Dew incoherent but able to obey mechanically. When she finally came to herself again they were ashore and she’d walked with the others into some sort of roofless enclosure. A loud but soothing voice seemed to come from above like a goddess’, and Dew knelt with the others and let it into her mind. After that, none of them resisted as drones came to them and took away all the pretty, pretty jewelry.

For a while it was quiet, as they all knelt or lay still while thought returned. Here and there, the stronger-willed Tribesisters recovered first, shaking their heads to try to clear them of fog and asking hesitantly where this was and what had happened. One girl was masturbating when she suddenly stopped and looked around her and cried out.

More cries echoed hers as the rest slowly woke up to being captured, until one of the first-awake called out sharply for quiet. Dew tried to be afraid, but her mouth and nose were still slick with the flavor of her nameless lover from the boat. She tried to remember the other Tribesister’s face, but aside from a general impression of loveliness all she could recall were glassy, half-lidded eyes and wet, slack lips—which fit many of the women around her, and probably her own face as well. This place didn’t have all the captives, either, so they may have been led to different enclosures.

She looked at the others, who were now realizing they’d been under a spell and charmed into surrendering. Every breath she took filled her with the essence of pussy and everything she saw blurred with an erotic glow. It faltered as she looked into a weeping face, but then she turned aside and saw another Tribesister, grinning at her with spacey unconcern, and arousal vanquished her again.

Bootheels clicked on the concrete. An Other strode in and appraised them, with two drones in attendance. They followed her like robots and froze to attention on either side of her, staring over the captives unblinkingly. Dew felt herself sucked into the emptiness in the nearer drone’s eyes, so unaware of Dew’s existence that for a moment Dew herself could doubt that she existed.

Tribal lore came back to her now, about how the Others made their slaves by draining the souls of hapless Tribesisters they snared and replacing them with their own dark spells. She realized she’d been seeing drones through the haze of her bead-trance since her capture, mindlessly herding captives or bearing burdens here at this place of the Others. Some she remembered just standing still—in this slavery, when there was no obedience, there was nothing else at all to do.

“Oh no,” said one of her Tribesisters. “Oh no, no, no!” She was staring at the other drone. Dew looked too.

It was Sweetberry.

Sweetberry looked different, partly because the way her hair was pulled back made her face more prominent. But mostly it was the complete absence of anything Sweetberry there anymore. She stood unnaturally taut, but looked as though she could stay that way forever if told to. Dew looked at the narrow straps that framed her breasts and V’d into her crotch, framing her pussy—which was shaved now, soft and mauve. It was as if Sweetberry’s new owners needed only those small bonds on her to keep her under their control.

“Sweetberry?” One Tribeswoman crawled toward her, shaking in her fear but making herself go forward. Dew recognized Lightfoot, who’d always sucked up to Sweetberry in the Tribe village, and sought her favor as well as her favors.

Some of the rest, too, recognized their spellbound sister. One screamed and bent her head to the concrete, sobbing, while another scuttled to her on her knees and tried to comfort her. Lightfoot ignored them, looking only at Sweetberry as she crawled to her.

“Sister . . .?” Her whisper carried more pain than the scream. “What did they do to you?”

Lightfoot knelt before Sweetberry now. The drone that had been their elder-sister in the hut didn’t respond at all. Dew glanced at the Other, but the safari-girl did nothing to interfere. Instead she watched avidly, as if afraid she’d miss part of this.

“Sweetberry, please. Hear me. Please, Sweetberry. Please remember.” Lightfoot was crying hard but she kept looking up. Dew felt guilt like a smooth blade. However much a toady Lightfoot had been, she really had looked up to Sweetberry, and had probably fallen in love with her.

Lightfoot leaned forward and put her face against Sweetberry’s thigh, leaving the gleam of her tears there as she kissed it and knelt back. She said something else as she gazed up at the drone, but the drone still did nothing. Lightfoot only moved her lips this time, knowing Sweetberry couldn’t hear or understand it. Whatever her last message to her friend was, Lightfoot said it only to herself.

Then she turned to the Other who watched, and the naked plea in her face made Dew turn away.

The Other laughed richly.

“This,” she told them all, “is what you’ll become.”

She squeezed Sweetberry’s shoulder. “It has no name, no memories, no will of its own. It has a number, but we can change that as we wish. Then it will have a new number.”

“When a Tribeslut gives up her soul to our magic, this is what’s left.” Stepping in front of Sweetberry, the safari girl passed a hand before her eyes. Sweetberry didn’t even blink.

“It knows very little. It knows it must obey and that obedience is pleasure. So this is just for my own entertainment.” She reached down and deftly worked a finger on Sweetberry’s clit hood. Sweetberry shuddered and her eyes rolled up in the orgasm, but she kept straight and when her gaze wasn’t white it went back to fixation on the far wall.

The Other held out her hand. The other drone attending her stepped forward and sucked Sweetberry’s juices from her fingers and then wiped her hand with a cloth. The Other struck a thoughtful pose, studying Sweetberry, perhaps still smelling Sweetberry on the fingers cupping her chin.

Then she punched Sweetberry in the stomach. Without a sound, Sweetberry folded and fell, managing to kneel on the concrete. Some of the captives gasped or cried out.

Lightfoot just as soundlessly turned and leaped at the Other.

The Other looked even more pleased as she moved almost casually aside. She struck out with her arm and leg too quickly for Dew to comprehend, and Lightfoot collapsed sobbing at her feet.

“You—can’t—” Lightfoot hadn’t been hit as hard as Sweetberry, but she wasn’t obeying drone compulsion to function despte pain, either. Dew admired how she made herself choke it out anyway. “You—took—her—soul—why—hit—?”

The Other ignored her. She waited while Sweetberry stiffened again to attention.

“Drone.”

Sweetberry’s eyes closed and opened. “The drone obeys,” she said, clearly, with only a trace of what the gut punch had done to her.

Pointing to Lightfoot, the Other said, “Dispose.”

Sweetberry moved her head down and to the side, like a clockwork girl, her eyes focusing on her friend for the first time, without a hint of recognition.

“Sweetberry?” Lightfoot looked up at her.

“The drone obeys,” Sweetberry repeated. She took two steps to her fallen Tribesister and dropped to her knees. Lightfoot reached out to her.

“Sweetb—!” Sweetberry slid inside Lightfoot’s reach and took Lightfoot’s throat. Lightfoot made a wretched moaning sound that still seemed more sad than afraid, shaking her head as much as she could in Sweetberry’s grip. “Sweet—d-don’t—p-p-pllll—”

Sweetberry stared into her eyes, neither sad nor eager, and throttled her.

Lightfoot was sprawled and poorly seated for leverage, and could only try uselessly to pull Sweetberry’s hands away. Her face was darkening and the tears shone against it. In a moment her arms batted almost idly against Sweetberry’s shoulders and dropped limply to the concrete.

“Release,” the Other commanded.

The drone obeyed, easing back to her feet and stepping away. Lightfoot slumped forward, gulping air but far from recovering consciousness.

Dew blinked, feeling cold to know that they’d all just lain there and watched. But the cold was laced with heat. Dew had been watching Sweetberry, asleep in the Others’ sorcery as she did their bidding.

They will make us become like that. Obeying their every command.

They will make me become like that.

There was low weeping, and more gasps. Dew didn’t know which knowledge was drawing forth which sounds.

“None of you can resist,” the Other told them, her voice thick with excitement. “You will be emptied and filled as we choose.”

Dew wondered if they would make her look at Sweetberry or another drone while their magic took her soul away. She pictured it pouring down the inside of her thighs. She pictured Lightfoot, wide-eyed and unresisting, licking it from her.

“You will join this one, bearing our burdens and serving our whims. You will serve us as we hunt your sisters who still run free and play out there—but they will no longer be your sisters.

“They will remember you—until we catch them and turn them into more of you. But you will never remember them again.”

28.

Pussy on fire, Nancy woke in the night, lying on her side.

The memory, erased and then restored, still stood out in her mind, even outside dreams. They’d told her the woman she’d known as Sweetberry had, in the end, been found in a Queen Lines call center, robotically activating other slaves when the raid came in. They never said anything about what came after, and Nancy presumed she was one of the drones too completely mindwiped—or too dangerously hooked on obedience—to be cured and freed.

The slavers had worked on Sweetberry for a long while. Nancy’s first and only trip had been her second, and she’d already been drone-processed. They just triggered her and showed her to the fresh-caught slaves as if the brainwash were that fast and easy, to break their wills.

It had done more to Nancy.

Last night’s fucking had heated that dream and left her asshole excitingly sore, though the strapon had nearly slid out of it as both women had lapsed into sleep. Krista was hot and still behind her, her breasts firm against Nancy’s back. In the low light, Nancy saw her hands bound before her on the pillow and tied to the bedpost with a length of belt.

She moved her head and felt the headphones on her. Instantly she was still, but Krista had fitted them too well for a half-awake slave to dislodge. They’d been hissing into her mind while she slept, and before that while Krista had buttfucked her and strummed her cunt.

Even to think about that, now, moved her ass back onto the strapon. Nancy grunted as it opened her again. Krista’s thrusting had opened her mind, and she was too lost in orgasms and the thrill of being impaled to remember when the mesmerizing hiss had replaced Krista’s hot breath in her ear. She was so submissive now that Krista could have ordered her to imagine the hand still on her pussy, while Krista reached coolly back and put the headset on her, pushing the CD player on with one finger while she tapped Nancy’s button with the other.

Nancy speared herself on Krista’s strapon again and felt the give as she stimulated her domme. She couldn’t hear any sound Krista made at being fucked awake. She watched her bound hands and listened to the whitenoise, as her own pulse roared in her ears and joined it. Mistress was refilling her mind as sex erased it.

Then a hand reclaimed her pussy again and her vision blurred.

She woke at attention, sticky and sensitive from her mons to the top of her asscrack. It was morning, and the room was light. Her eyes stayed on the spot where Krista’s fingers had snapped. Slowly her peripheral vision returned as her mind woke in stages, and she saw more of her new girlfriend.

Krista stood straight, too, in her own trance, with a cellphone at her ear. She was naked below her bra, even the strapon gone, but what made Nancy wet was the blank devotion on her face.

“I understand, Mistress.” Krista spoke earnestly into space. “I will reinstruct the slave, and bring her when it is time.”

“I must obey.” Briskly she lowered the phone, and even this stunned, Nancy could see how her domme longed to stay on the call, doing nothing but listen to their Mistress command her. Admiration for the slave who controlled her pierced Nancy—and then more worship, for the Mistress Who’d made Krista so obedient.

Krista stepped in front of Nancy, and Nancy obeyed the compulsion to offer her gaze to the other slave. The gold-green eyes captured her instantly. Nancy felt a shameful little frisson at being this easy for another hypnotized woman to enthrall.

Then thralldom itself dimmed her mind and she knew only that she stood there, nude and blank. She waited for Krista to put something into her empty mind. But she was vaguely happy to keep standing there, lost in the green. She was a slave with no purpose. She was—

Fingers snapped. “Slave.”

“Yes, Krista.”

“Are you awake?”

She blinked. It might be a test. “Yes, Krista.”

“And before this?”

“I was hypnotized.” She felt newly sticky between her thighs and breathed in.

Krista’s hand stroked her face, slid down to her breast. “You are still hypnotized, slave.”

“Yes, Krista.”

“Do you understand what is being done to you?”

Nancy’s mind suddenly stabilized. It was as though she’d floated contentedly in a warm dark pool and then found something float under her limp arms, clinging to it without thinking.

“Yes, Krista.

“You are conditioning me to fall into trance. You are destroying my will with repeated triggers. You will keep hypnotizing me until I forget being awake.” The words flowed out of her, bright and clear in the dimness of her thoughts. “You will train me to function under command and pass as a free woman until I am reinstructed.

“You are turning me into Her zombie.”

Krista nodded, hearing Nancy say what Mistress had programmed her to listen for. Her nostrils flared—Nancy’s arousal as she recited told Krista how deeply this teaching was buried in her.

“You understand this but have no will to resist.”

Nancy groaned with the pleasure that flared between her thighs. Of will to resist she remembered little—just how good it felt to surrender it.

A little more willpower slipped from her as Krista stared her into trance again.

Nancy went to the shower, and realized that what she was washing from her body, along with sex and lube and sweat, was more of her selfhood. She knew that was just another hypnotic mantra Krista had whispered as she’d stood mindlessly, but its falsity made it even more true. It rang in her, and she nearly had an orgasm from not masturbating, which Krista had told her not to do.

Later, Nancy stood primly in her new grey flannel suit as Krista inspected her. Its pleated miniskirt was nearly as short as the jacket, and the little vest shaped her bust subtly but nicely. Dark hose sheathed her legs, over black pumps with three-inch heels.

She didn’t remember the suit; it had been chosen for her and put in Krista’s luggage, while she was still receiving Mistress’ commands. Perhaps Bianca had selected it, smirking at how it would make her look—but Nancy remembered Bianca still and helpless, wearing nothing but Her blue garter on her thigh. Bianca might have selected it with only Mistress’ thoughts in her mind, before forgetting even that.

Nancy relaxed, her body still humming from how it felt as Krista had dressed her. She turned at a gesture, seeing herself in the mirror now. As she watched the office toy in the glass meekly endure Krista’s scrutiny, Nancy felt even more like a doll in a new costume, and the feeling stayed with her. When Krista bade her walk, to see the look in motion, Nancy couldn’t look away from her hemline and the way her thighs moved, almost begging to be groped. Outside, among free people, she’d feel this costume sit lightly on her body, something her Owner could slip off her to leave Her doll naked.

She’d spend the day at work—like this. At the next command she stood still, feet together, legs long under the tiny skirt, gleaming in nylon curves. She was wanton and harnessed at once, a whore and a puppet.

Anyone who wanted her could have her, in the ladies’ room or over the copier or on the floor of the snack area. She wondered if there was a switch implanted in her thoughts now that would make her submit to that. Or invite it. She wondered if it even mattered, to her programming, who it was that might fuck her that way.

Then Krista told her to look into her eyes, and Nancy was deeply hypnotized again.

Krista left her in trance as they drove to work.

At the office, Krista walked her in like a mother on the first day of school, and Nancy stayed meek. In the hearing of the receptionist Krista told her to be good, and Nancy said softly, “Yes, Krista.” They kissed and Nancy felt her face soften into a glaze-eyed smile as she turned to drift in toward her desk. People stared at them, and kept staring at the openly gloating way Krista watched her go. More of them stared at Nancy’s outfit.

Nancy was anesthetized. Her daily routines were visible through a translucent pane of Krista’s commands and the more powerful compulsions Mistress had implanted in her with Her CDs. She calmly obeyed two sets of compulsions, and with drowsy amusement she watched everyone treat her as though she were as awake as they were.

As she dutifully went through her e-mails, she was barely able to wonder what it was Mistress wanted her to be numb to—fear of being discovered as a slave, or the perilous itch to out herself as one. She paused, staring through someone’s grammar-free message, and understood how she’d been able to pull that thought together.

Her programming was teaching her to enjoy not knowing why. A puppet’s strings were pulled, and a whore danced jerkily, and didn’t wonder.

Nancy’s puppeteer was a true artist, and even when She jerked Her puppet-whore, the world saw only fluid grace.

Nancy savored that for a moment before her mind faded to the next task.

“Good morning.”

Nancy knew it was a trigger, but it felt like a tongue up her thigh. The anesthetic mists parted as she looked up. The newcomer was Brooke, one of the interns, sharp enough to be asked to stay on through the school year. Brooke was pretty and friendly and a few days ago Nancy had only casually envied the boys chasing her. Nancy hadn’t been another woman’s zombie then.

Now she was primed, and Brooke shone like a live-action girl who’d just stepped into the cartoon that hypnosis had made of Nancy’s world. With no clue she was doing it, Brooke rang with a sexual vibe that had Nancy’s whole body quivering in resonance.

“Brooke!” She heard herself pitch her voice low, excited but subdued—seductive. Brooke blinked at it, part of her sensing Nancy’s desire without knowing what it was. Now, the hypnosis kept Nancy tranquilized, her need to kiss Brooke and suck on her and slide down her warm body paralyzed behind serenity.

Instead of leaping, she rose gracefully from the chair and relished Brooke’s involuntary glance at her thighs under the skirt, like her own look into the mirror but innocent. She watched Brooke’s big brown eyes widen as Nancy seemed about to embrace her, and then lose focus a bit as Nancy just took her upper arm instead.

“I’ll come by and see you later!” Nancy beamed at her, and she smiled artlessly back, taking it for the easy affection Nancy’d always shown her. She went on down the hallway to her cube, her ass twitching the more sweetly because she didn’t know she was doing it.

Nancy’s cunt still juiced from the trigger that Brooke’s greeting had delivered. She dream-recalled sitting quietly and playing with herself as she described each woman she worked with, while Mistress’ voice stroked her mind with questions and laughter. Mistress might have been especially pleased to hear about Brooke, but it was so hard for Nancy to remember.

Remembering now was just how her programming was coding her thoughts so she would understand and obey.

She turned back to her desk to spend more time at the computer, doing things she’d forget even as she did them. It didn’t matter. Only obedience mattered.

Nancy didn’t know, or need to know, whether her purpose was to seduce Brooke, or hypnotize her, or rape her. But she still had enough of her mind to herself to begin to see how Mistress intended her to leave this job.

29.

“Hello, slave.”

It almost made Nancy come where she sat to hear Krista call her that, on a work phone, with people watching. A couple of them saw her flush and gulp, and she enjoyed the embarrassment that reached her through the hypnotic fog.

“Hello, Krista,” she said meekly.

“Are you toiling hard for your pretend-owners?” Krista’s scornful affection sounded real. Nancy could almost believe she’d let Krista take her home from a bar, and break her down from pickup to plaything in a single night. Anyone who overheard them would think so as well. Even if no one was monitoring the line, it was good practice.

“Yes, Krista.” As instructed, Nancy spoke quietly enough to obscure the words, but people could hear her submissive tone, threaded with light arousal. “Just as you told me to.”

If they heard her, though, that was fine, too.

“I want you for lunch, slave. Tell them whatever you need to.”

“Yes, Krista.” It was nowhere near midday.

“Where do you think I should take you?”

Nancy’s voice shook a little with the eros of groveling. “Wherever you want to go, Krista. What will we have?”

“One of us,” Krista purred, “will have caviar.” She laughed at Nancy’s tiny sound and hung up.

Nancy headed over to Joan’s desk, basking in Joan’s stare at her leggy new look. For a mute second she wondered when Krista would dress her in hotpants.

“Joan? I need to take some personal time now. An early lunch.” This was going to make asking for Friday off even more awkward, but Nancy liked the way all that felt on her skin.

“Early,” Joan said, looking pointedly at her watch.

“My girlfriend called. She wants me to.”

“Beth didn’t seem—”

“Krista’s my girlfriend, Joan.” Then she knew Krista’s proprietary goodbye kiss earlier hadn’t been wasted, as she saw Joan stop and remember someone telling her about the forceful girl who’d had Nancy in the palm of her hand this morning.

Joan glanced at the rhinestone collar and then away.

She only took a couple of seconds before smiling and saying, “Of course, Nancy. You’re more than current. Bon appetit.”

Nancy smiled back and mock-curtsied, and went for her jacket and purse. Her instructions were to report immediately to the lobby after Krista called; the other slave was already on her way in the car. She had no idea what would follow, only knowing that Mistress’ call earlier today had reprogrammed Krista, and that it was no longer Her will that Nancy spend the day here at work.

As she rode down in the elevator, half-recalling Krista using the indicator to entrance her, she didn’t really know whether Krista had told her or it was one of her own trance instructions. She dared to hope that her own deeper brainwashing might start early. Walking out the glass doors of the building, she let the street sounds drown out the needful little moan it cost her, to think of what the Queen Lines slavers had done to her back on Isle Dormignonne, the first time they’d ravished her mind.

It tightened her thighs as she stepped to the car that Krista pulled to the curb, and Nancy knew her nervous gait drew stares. She wanted to kiss her domme for putting her in this skirt, and into this trance.

But as soon as she felt the leather under her thighs she lost any thought of doing anything but looking placidly forward through the windshield. She hadn’t even seen clearly what Krista was wearing.

It didn’t matter. Only obedience mattered. And next to her, Krista was even more obedient.

“Peremptory nebula.”

Nancy stiffened under the seatbelt and felt her eyes glaze over.

They were alongside another car coming up to a light, and she knew someone had been looking at her when Krista hit her with the trigger. Dropping into hypnosis in public would have felt as scary-sweet as being nude, if she’d been able to stay aware of it. As it was, the little pussyflare vanished in the deeper turn-on of waiting for Krista to tell her what to think.

“You are no longer aware of where we are, slave, or where we are going. It all slides off your smooth, empty mind like water flowing over a hollow stone.”

“A hollow stone,” Nancy whispered. She pictured a little Nancy-shaped figurine in a fountain, naked and expressionless. It was easier to focus on that than on the road and landscape outside, as Krista’s command took over her mind.

“To see is to forget.”

Nancy repeated it and felt it become true. Krista spoke some more in a low, sleepy tone, and Nancy let it slide into her thoughts the way Krista had slid into her last night. It aroused her some more and she gaped out at the world, which was an abstract flow of shapes now, attractive and fleeting, blurring into a visual breeze that left nothing in her as it passed.

Dimly she recognized that she was being taken to a special place of Mistress Rusalka’s, one that a woman who didn’t yet belong totally to Her could not be allowed to identify. But Nancy was controlled enough that she could be hypnotized instead of blindfolded.

She squirmed on the seat until the thought left her mind, and then was still.

Krista had stopped whispering. She put the CD player on Nancy’s lap, and let Nancy fit the programming headphones on herself. Nancy settled back and let the whitenoise flood her again. She kept her eyes open, and soon the rest of the world was as blank and soothing as the hiss in her ears.

She was staring forward as she was awakened. She felt the CD player on her lap under her hands, the headphones on top where Krista had made her put them while still in trance. Her mind still seemed blank but there were orders in it now that her body obeyed. She got out of the car and followed Krista into a building.

Nancy didn’t try to make sense of where she was, or even the kind of building she was led into. Krista’s posthypnotic suggestions still controlled her, and the visual breeze had become a visual mist. A door had closed behind her when Krista said something softly, and Nancy had permission to think again.

Someone in tight, iridescent gymwear sat in a folding chair. Nancy recognized the attractive black woman who’d sat with Bianca when Audrey had brought her in on a leash. She’d been the one who gave Bianca the bell that triggered Audrey into a maidservant.

She leered up at Nancy. Nancy remembered Audrey, under Rusalka’s spell, putting this woman and the others to sleep, but that didn’t keep her stare from making Nancy feel silly and weak and wet.

“Hello, Krista.” Her voice was high and sweet. Nancy wondered vaguely whether the woman had just triggered her girlfriend.

“Hello, Vivian.” Krista sounded cooperative, though, not sleepy. “She’s been prepared.”

Vivian studied Nancy a little more. “Yes. Trance becomes her.”

Krista told Nancy to relax, and carefully undressed her while Vivian watched. It thrilled Nancy to be Krista’s doll in front of someone. Krista left her her collar and the dark hose and heels, and Vivian stood up to inspect her, pointedly examining her erect nipples and the way her pussy shone.

“Slave.”

“Yes, Krista.” Nancy stiffened, excited to submit aloud to her domme.

Krista took her hand. “You are not yet to be subjected to Her deeper conditioning. She is pleased with how you have obeyed Her so far, and She will enslave your mind on Her schedule.”

Nancy waited. She understood, and felt touched that Mistress would want to have Her newest, least-trained slave reassured like this.

“Today there is a way you can be useful to Her as you are.”

Without thinking, Nancy squeezed Krista’s hand and opened her mouth to say thank you but caught herself. She never looked away from her focus point on the wall over Vivian’s shoulder.

Krista squeezed back. “That will please Her too, slave.” She waited until Nancy stopped trembling.

“She has put Vivian in charge of what She wants done here. You will obey Vivian now without question, slave, until she returns you to me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Krista.” A wicked pleasure went through her. “I will obey Vivian. Without question.”

“Thank you, Krista,” she heard Vivian say, in the voice that would control her. Then Vivian’s hand was cool on her ribs, under her breast.

“Look at me, slave.”

Nancy stayed erect and turned only her head. Vivian had lovely eyes . . .

“You remember Audrey, of course.”

“Yes, Vivian.”

“She belongs to Mistress, and she, too, is trying to obey Her without question. But it is harder for Audrey. Mistress knows she needs stronger control.” Vivian caressed Nancy. “Audrey is not yet as tame a girl as you are.

“So you will help her to see how tame a girl can be, once she’s been in Mistress’ hands.”

Nancy shook.

“No, no.” Vivian soothed her like an animal trainer. “You would do anything to Audrey that we told you to, but for now, all you are to do is talk to her. Mistress says you remember your slavery on that island.” The other slave’s voice was wistful, and Nancy felt momentarily sorry for Vivian, who would never know obedience on Dormignonne.

“Tell Audrey about it, slave. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Vivian.”

Vivian looked at her. “One other thing, slave.

“Peremptory nebula.”

Nancy stiffened against her hand, swinging her head forward, feeling the trance slide over her like a warm pool.

Vivian told her something, and then spoke to her some more. Nancy listened attentively. She heard nothing and absorbed everything. Vivian finished programming her and told her to awaken.

Letting her go, Vivian looked at her watch. “All right. Krista, the lights, please?” The room went dark, and then Vivian opened a door. Nancy shook, as wavy bands of light passed across the opening, swirling and dancing, and they seemed to pull her gaze.

She’d been deprogrammed, but even now Nancy felt the worship burn inside her, and the old seduction of mindless adoration.

Lurid in the gloom of the inner chamber, there was a Spiral.

30.

The Spiral was being used on someone.

Even as Vivian led her in, though, the Spiral faded and the room lights came on, high and dim. She wondered how susceptible Vivian and Krista and Her other slaves had become to what Queen Lines systems could do to them.

If the therapists hadn’t cleansed Nancy’s mind of her own QLR training, just seeing those color patterns strobe for a few more beats would have stunned her instantly. It would have left her helplessly open to the Spiral’s deeper effects, and utterly obedient to whatever commands were being emitted.

Now the colors were gone. It was almost disappointing.

Soft light brightened over a woman lying supine on an exam table. It had restraints, but they were all neatly stowed at the stresspoints. Audrey stared emptily up at where the great whirlpool had transfixed her.

Behind the table, nude but for her blue garter, Bianca had been at attention. Now she broke pose, and stiffly slipped off a pair of tinted goggles, leaving them around her neck like a swimmer’s. Only by contrast with Audrey’s were her pretty brown eyes focused. Bianca was too deep in her own trance even to leer at Nancy again.

Seeing both women gave Nancy a moist pang of recognition, as she remembered not only her own sessions under the Spiral but her later duties as an attendant, helping brainwash other victims. Drones were issued protection to shield their eyes and ears from additional controls, and Nancy could still picture how the conditioning chambers looked through the shadow of the polarized lenses. Then and now, Nancy didn’t know what happened to the mind of a drone who accidentally looked into the whirling lights, but she knew how irresistible drone programming was. No drone ever forgot her shielding, much less formed the idea of not wearing it.

Impersonally gentle, Bianca detached various devices from Audrey’s head and body. Audrey looked past Bianca and through her. Neither woman knew the other was there. Nancy watched the puppet show and wanted . . .

When the mind control gear was stowed, Bianca returned to attention, blank and bovine. Vivian dismissed her, and she stalked from the room without looking at them.

Then Vivian palmed Nancy’s ass and moved back into the anteroom. Nancy forgot the others and stepped into the light until her thigh just touched the table.

“Audrey?”

The other slave blinked and turned, and came more awake without moving her very relaxed body. She looked at Nancy and Nancy had to smile, remembering how she’d slept off the drugs under Audrey’s gaze before. Audrey smiled back tentatively—seeing a barely-dressed woman at attention was reassuring to any of Mistress Rusalka’s slaves, since it meant being in a place She controlled.

“You were in my house,” Audrey said quietly, as her thoughts slowly reassembled.

“Yes, I was. I am also one of Her slaves.” With a reassuring look, Nancy settled herself on the table, with her ass against Audrey’s warm thigh. As Audrey had done at her own awakening, she put a hand on Audrey’s belly, and now she stroked it.

Nancy felt herself moving with exaggerated gentleness, as though the other slave were a small child or an animal who must be pampered and cajoled, and Audrey’s vulnerability was almost palpable. Strangely, Nancy seemed to be floating toward wakefulness, at least as clearheaded as she’d been since Mistress had begun hypnotizing her. It wasn’t just seeing the two women who’d been in here with the Spiral. Vivian’s programming was opening her eyes.

She remembered the command that Vivian had left her awake to hear, and obeyed.

“How long has Mistress owned you, Audrey?”

Audrey’s eyes lidded but she frowned with the effort to remember. Nancy smiled and nodded, still lightly moving her hand over Audrey’s soft, smooth stomach.

“Months,” Audrey breathed. Her mind must still be spinning from what the Spiral had done to it. Nancy pressed her free hand against her stocking top to keep it from between her legs. Soon, when Mistress willed, she’d be like this, blinking swirly afterimages into her brain, unable to process even simple questions. Only simple answers, and total obedience to Her.

“Mmm-hmm,” she told Audrey approvingly, and the freshly-brainwashed slave smiled shyly, happy to please.

“Would you like to know how long I’ve belonged to her, Audrey?” She waited while Audrey nodded back to her. “Mistress Rusalka enslaved me on the way to Isle Dormignonne.”

Audrey’s eyes widened. “But—that was . . .”

Nancy nodded, and watched Audrey fade again under the slow circles she made on Audrey’s stomach. Then the other slave blinked and moved a little against her.

“Deprogrammed,” she whispered, unable to think beyond that.

“Yes,” said Nancy. Then she stopped stroking Audrey. She realized what she was here for, and she pulled herself up onto the table, straddling Audrey’s legs and drawing herself up Audrey’s body.

Nancy was going to help brainwash herself now even as she sent Audrey deeper, and would do it while as free as any slave of Rusalka’s could be. She managed to be lying against Audrey when she fully realized that, and Audrey sighed as she felt Nancy’s nipples harden against her skin.

Kissing Audrey between her breasts, she smiled down at the shorter woman, feeling Audrey’s cleft hot and slick above her own loins.

“Yes, Audrey. They deprogrammed me. But I surrendered my will to Her when She called to me. No one could give it back.” She slid up and kissed Audrey on the lips, sucking at her mouth and pulling away only when Audrey bucked dreamily under her and put out her tongue.

“When She takes any of us, Audrey, she makes us Hers. I am Her slave. You are Her slave. Both of us live to obey Her. She made us want to.”

Audrey mewed, and Nancy bent her head to taste Audrey’s throat and collarbone. She kissed her way up the artery and seduced Audrey’s ear, grinding her body against the other slave and feeling Audrey’s moisture on her thigh.

“No one can resist Her, Audrey,” she whispered, close enough to feel the down of the ear against her lips.

“I thought I was free and so did everyone else—but we were all dreaming. When I saw Her, I knew only my obedience again. I thought I was my own woman, but then I knew—I remembered, Audrey—that I am just one of Her girls.”

Like a languid push-up, she raised herself off of Audrey, feeling the room air chill her where she’d lain against the other’s fevered body. Audrey moved beneath her, sleepy and sinuous like a drugged serpent. Audrey’s mouth was slack and her eyes rolled up, but they came to focus again and looked pleadingly up at Nancy.

This felt so good.

“You were trying to resist Her, Audrey.” Nancy didn’t know if that was a guess or Vivian’s programming. She spoke not accusingly but with amusement, even surprise.

“I . . . no . . .” Audrey was sad, but the brainwashing had left her confused and Nancy’s foreplay was destroying what was left of her ability to cling to what saddened her.

Then it surfaced. “My friend. She . . . teaches aerobics. I must drug her and make her weak so she can become . . .” Audrey’s eyes glazed. “. . . one of us . . .”

She closed her eyes and tried to frown. “I must, but . . . I . . . can’t . . .”

Nancy slowly lowered herself to touch bodies again, breathing with Audrey. “Yesss,” she whispered to Audrey’s soft throat. “An aerobics instructor would please Mistress so much. Pretty, mmm, and so fit and strong . . .” She slid herself against Audrey, aroused by the image of the drugged and entranced woman in spandex, flexing and dancing mindlessly for Her pleasure.

“And with students who will trust her, and let her put them into trance with music and—”

“Nnnnhhh,” Audrey moaned, even as her body swung again into synch with Nancy’s. “She . . . I . . . love her. Not for . . . I think . . . she helped me . . . wh-when . . .”

Nancy felt the tears against her face before she saw them, and slid more gently against the other slave, kissing her tenderly and saying nothing.

Audrey’s eyes focused now, and the plea in them was painful. “I must obey Mistress. I’m trying to. So hard. She’s training me, so p-patiently . . .”

Nancy stiffened against her. She’d been ready to give Beth to Mistress, pausing only to shudder in pleasure. Audrey’s friend was protected by the woman writhing under her, agonized by how her love blocked her obedience.

“Help me.” It was just a wisp of sound.

“I will.” Nancy kissed her again. “You’ve already given yourself to Her. She knows how loyal you are.

“You want to obey Her, Audrey.” She saw Audrey’s eyes widen again, receptively. “I can feel that.” She slid against the trembling slave, and felt the new tremor ripple through her. “It excites me to be with someone who worships Her irresistible will as much as you do.

“She made me willing to do anything. I have no purpose but to carry out Her purposes. Being Her submissive tool makes me wet. She did that to me, and that will be what I am until I die, Audrey.

“Yes. I only hope I die obeying her—after my task is done.” Nancy’s hips swayed, as she spoke words she’d chanted in Ritual when she’d been Dew.

“They all thought I was free, Audrey, but nothing and no one frees a woman She has made Hers. No slave of Hers wants to be anything but Hers.

“That is how powerful She is, Audrey. That is why you cannot resist or disobey.”

She kissed Audrey once more, deeply and urgently. She felt Audrey soften into it and let the other slave drink the passion before freeing her lips.

“She took my will from me, Audrey. I was in Her thrall and I gave it to Her. You have given Her your will, too—I can see the missing place in your eyes where it used to be.”

She stared into Audrey’s eyes, and she could see the emptiness. Without having to be told to, Audrey stared back into hers to find the reflection.

“Just relax. Let Her spells empty your mind of anything but Her. You can’t resist. You only thought you could.”

Nancy reared up, straddling Audrey and holding her shoulders.

“No one resists. All must obey.

“You must obey.”

“I must obey.” Audrey sang it, softly. The empty place in her eyes had widened a little, and darkened. In its center something was starting to spin.

She was looking through Nancy, and relaxed between her thighs.

There was a sound from the doorway, or a word, but Nancy was too busy obeying the trigger to recognize it. She swung herself off the inert slave, feeling her own awareness ebb as Audrey’s mindless gaze stayed fixed upward.

As her heels clattered onto the floor, she came to attention. Bianca marched back, insectile in her goggles. The multicolored glow shimmered on and brightened and began dizzyingly to spin. But even as it tempted Nancy to turn and watch and succumb, another implanted command popped in her mind and she closed her eyes.

She stood quietly, listening to the pulsing hum of the machine and the sounds of Bianca reconnecting Audrey to the conditioning systems. Audrey’s own breathing grew urgent as she gazed up into the Spiral again while it sucked her thoughts away.

Then Bianca took Nancy’s arm and hip and led her to the anteroom. She left her eyes closed and waited for the next command. She never really heard it.

31.

“Yes, Krista.” As she set the phone down, Nancy woke up at her desk.

Laid out in her mind were a half-dozen minor conversations since returning to work. She didn’t remember having them. Something had pulled her strings and operated her mouth.

Nancy remembered nothing else after the Spiral. She looked over the office she’d crossed obliviously and unnoticed. She wondered what Krista had done to her mind as she’d ridden back here, something more powerful than a subliminal CD. But Krista might not have brought her back.

Maybe Vivian had put Nancy back to sleep, then hypnotized Krista into replacing Bianca as the naked drone in the brainwashing chamber, leaving Bianca entranced. Maybe, alone with three completely obedient women, Vivian had fucked them before doing anything else—or maybe her own programming emptied her mind of anything but her task.

Then Vivian could have put Nancy and Bianca into a van, and made Bianca do things to Nancy that neither of them would remember, while Vivian drove them here. Nancy would be dressed and mindwiped by the time they let her out a block away.

It made her want to slide off her chair and frig herself. But it turned her on harder, to have been that windup toy, masquerading as a woman with mind and will. No one knowing.

She slipped easily into her work. It helped her practice obeying and focusing on instructions, even if not for an actual owner. Then her pussy whispered to her, and she rose.

Beautiful Brooke, the intern. She wanted to see Brooke. She wanted to be with Brooke. It wasn’t just how delicious she thought Brooke’s honey would be, or how smooth and tight Brooke’s thighs would feel against her ears as she lapped it. It was . . .

“Hello!” she purred from behind, enjoying Brooke’s startled-fawn glance before grinning back at her. Nancy had a new sense of Brooke’s personal space and stayed just on its edge, liking the perplexity as the girl tried, without knowing it, to decide whether she wanted Nancy nearer or not. Nancy pictured her strapped to something while Krista made Nancy go down on her.

She and Brooke liked each other, and the intern confided in her more than she did in her assigned mentor. For now, Brooke was happy to have Nancy’s new, focused attention.

“Brooke, I’m making it my job—my purpose, actually—to help you grow here. To get you what you need, to do what you need done.

“Whatever you need, please come to me. Ask it and it’s yours.”

Brooke’s gaze flicked to her thighs, shimmering in her hose below the grey flannel miniskirt, and back to her eyes. Nancy was miming a secretary coming on to her boss. Brooke had never been on the receiving end, and couldn’t recognize it.

“But I’m just—!”

“Don’t be silly, Brooke. You’re not ‘just’ an intern.

“You’re not just anything, Brooke.” She let the pause go not quite too long, held eye contact until it wasn’t quite uncomfortable.

“Besides,” she said more perkily, “if you reach even part of your potential, I’ll end up being your intern.”

Brooke laughed. As she let her ambition take flight the gleam in her eyes had no cruelty in it. Nancy savored it anyway. She could serve Brooke the way she might have served Ms Wing—an utterly devoted office toy in a microskirt. It would be even sweeter to grovel under Brooke’s petite heel.

She’d be like a tame pony given to a princess coming of age. Brooke would learn to ride her, how to make her jump and step to whip and spur, and how to make her docile with a whisper and a fingertip. Brooke would ride Nancy for pleasure, but more than that she’d be using Nancy to teach herself how to control spirited thoroughbreds later. In time, the boardroom would be Brooke’s stable of eager, bridled mares . . .

“You haven’t even eaten, have you?” she asked. Brooke had been too busy—and too diligent—even to slip away to nuke popcorn. She made noises about doing that.

“Absolutely not. I’ll go bring you something, and you can explain what part of that report is giving you trouble.”

“Oh, no, Nancy, it’s—”

“Please. Anything you need. You like those pita things from the deli downstairs, don’t you?”

“Thank you, thank you!” Brooke surrendered and put her palms together. “You’re a lifesaver.”

It was early afternoon but the deli wasn’t too crowded, and it would be easy to get back before Joan or anyone else had a problem with her second trip out. Nancy got into line, and fantasized about presenting the food to Brooke while on her knees.

She ordered what Brooke liked and moved aside to wait. Someone stood beside her.

“Nancy?”

Beth.

“Can we talk?”

Nancy tingled as it hit her that this had been her lover, before she started becoming someone else’s slave. It should have bothered her, but it just excited her. She was in public, without Krista touching her or controlling her. While she knew her mind was full of the new truths and urges Mistress had installed, she felt relatively awake. Even her feeling for Beth was mostly unshadowed. If Beth wanted to persuade her to come away now, and eventually reveal where she’d been, there was nothing to stop her.

Except that I live only to obey Mistress Rusalka. I am Her property. It is Her will that I obey.

“All right, Beth. Over there?”

Slipping onto the seat, Nancy let Beth see her miniskirt as it rose. It was a small table and they were close to each other. Beth searched her eyes and then looked at her collar. Nancy felt Mistress watching from inside her mind, and wished Beth could know Whose collar it really was. Beth flinched when Nancy lifted her chin a little to show it off, and Nancy felt guilty and turned on.

Beth reached up to touch it.

She thought better of whatever she was about to say. Then she said it anyway. “I’m sorry. Am I allowed to touch her—”

“Property?” Nancy smiled and left her chin raised, but Beth put her hand back on the table. “You may touch, if you want to. The collar, or me. We both belong to Krista.” She watched Beth absorb this.

“In fact, Krista ordered me to keep you on a short list of women who are allowed to fuck me without her prior permission.” Beth didn’t blink.

Nancy kept going, like an uninvited striptease. “The stalls in the restroom here are roomy and pretty clean. If you want me now, I—”

“Stop it.”

No anguish, just annoyance. A few days ago it would have shriveled Nancy’s attitude—but a few days ago she was still free and wouldn’t have dreamed she’d be doing this. She would have been kissing Beth, not baiting her.

But Beth looked at her too long. Nancy in a collar talking like that had shriveled something in her.

“So she tells you who to fuck?” Saying it made it more real and she swallowed.

Nancy let herself remember trance, and Audrey, soft and helpless, receptive to what Nancy tongued into her. Beth wasn’t in trance, but she was helpless. And Nancy was what made her soft . . .

“She’s my domme, Beth. She dominates me. I submit to her.” Not reaching under her skirt while she said that was hard, but her apparent calm made her words hit harder.

“She gets to tell me to do all sorts of things. And to know that I’ll obey her.”

Beth did look like she’d been hit.

It stung Nancy to know she’d done that. But it stung the way Krista’s hand did on her ass. She needed to feel it again.

“Beth, I’m happy now. I’m on my knees and getting what I need.”

Beth studied her, trying not to believe it.

“I really am a submissive. I know that, finally. I needed someone to take control, and Krista did.” She moved a little where she sat, and let her voice flutter a little. “She knows how to make me—want to do things. Anything she wants.”

“She’s really got you brainwashed, hasn’t—?”

Even as she blurted it out Beth reddened, and looked so horrified it frightened Nancy. She covered her mouth and shook her head. She looked down.

“Nancy. I can’t believe I said that. Not to you. Not to you. Oh my god.”

Nancy’s heart burned to see her hurting—and to know she’d driven Beth to it. But the burning just melted more of her, inside, as she yielded to Mistress’ will.

She knows how to make me want to do things. Sitting here and torturing her lover was turning Nancy on—even more than looking down at the ocean and praying for a command to jump.

Beth was guilty and afraid because she thought she’d let Nancy fall into the thrall of an ordinary predator. Nancy trembled at how Beth would react if she knew how enslaved Nancy really was. The urge to tell Beth she was Mistress’ hypnotized slavegirl spiked up into her mind. But like any thought that was merely her own, it stayed under the crushing control Mistress already had over her.

“I know what you meant, Beth.” It was easy to sound sincere. Nancy reached over and took one of Beth’s hands from her mouth. When she didn’t let go, it drew stares, and she was awake enough for the irony. Beth had come out before they’d met, and now Nancy was programmed for blatant gestures.

Beth looked gratefully back at her. Beth wasn’t putting up shields—she was leaving herself open to whatever Nancy did, so Nancy could see it.

Nancy imagined Mistress standing next to her on concrete. “Drone—”

Pointing down to naked, weeping Beth. “Dispose.”

The drone obeys.

Right now Beth would drink anything Nancy gave her. Nancy smiled and waited, but no instruction popped into her head. There was no capsule hidden on her, to dose Beth with. It was so easy and so hot to think of, though—watching Beth succumb, telling Beth to board Vivian’s van and do as she was told, savoring Beth’s glassy-eyed obedience until Vivian spoke her own trigger.

They sat and held hands. Beth didn’t look hopeful, just happy that Nancy hadn’t walked away from her.

Nancy imagined coming back from the first trip to Dormignonne, if she’d already been into women then and dating Beth. Guiltlessly slipping away for hypnotic trysts with Danni the recruitment drone, she’d be told to lure Beth into making the next trip to the island wih her. Back in trance, she’d help her controllers drug and hypnotize Beth into slavery. Or she’d walk away when told, and let strangers do it all, forgetting Beth until they woke her at the end of the cruise.

She and Beth would have activated each other, the day the phone rang.

Nancy astonished herself now by thinking of warning Beth. She knew she’d tell all to Krista, and Krista might program her to use the drug the next time she met Beth. She already wanted to. But if she told Beth there was danger, Beth would just try to rescue her, and that would be a problem.

If she wanted to keep Beth safe, Beth needed to hate her—or despise her. She could offer Beth a bathroom quickie again—or let Beth watch while she offered it to some other woman here. Or to three.

But Nancy belonged to Mistress now, and knew what She would want.

Beth told her softly she could learn to be happy if Nancy was, and wanted to see her again, just to talk. Nancy squeezed her hand.

“Yes, Beth. I’d like that. A lot.”

Guilt just made a warm lotion between her thighs as she realized that was true.

32.

Deep in the Hive under the Buildings on Dormignonne, supine in its sleeping tube, drone 602 opened its eyes. It wasn’t waking up. It had just reached the phase in its daily programming that would implant visual cues to control it when it began its shift. Even in what passed for its dreams, there was nothing of having been “Dew,” or of having been anyone at all.

Drone 602 had not been awake in any real sense for a long time, and it had lain passively in its tube as any memory of what that meant had been scrubbed from its thoughts. Drone 602 had few thoughts now.

The scrubbing went on always, especially here in the Hive, where the walls shimmered hypnotically and the shadows whispered secrets no drone could ignore or disbelieve. But, except for sessions under the Spiral, it was most intense in the sleeping tubes. Probes touched drone 602’s flushed skin, and other devices cupped its engorged nipples and invaded its slick cleft. The hiss from the earbuds told it that it felt nothing, but by now drone 602 had been trained to notice nothing but the pleasure, and only when it was told to.

Drone 602’s world went Orange, starting with the rapidly blinking light a handsbreadth from its face on the top of its tube. Its earbuds hissed and roared, pulsing in synch with the flicker. Its brainwaves had long since been trained to fall into phase with that rhythm. Drone 602 orgasmed as this happened, sealing it in. It was only a small orgasm, but drone 602’s mind was small now too. The jolt was enough to addict drone 602 to obeying whatever it was offered.

Drone 602 was coded now. It would obey Orange until it was reprogrammed.

The earbuds whispered in its ears. Fresh from coding, a drone’s always-pliant mind became almost liquid, and what it heard now hardened into its reality. Another session in this tube could obliterate it just as easily, as it did every shift, but drone 602’s memories never lasted longer than that.

It lay wide-eyed as various images were shown to it, and let the whisper tell it what it must think and do when it saw each one. Certain other images glowed in its eyes as whitenoise filled its ears and its pussy tingled. When those things happened, thought would stop.

A chime ended the session. Drone 602 lay with its mind as empty and silent as the inside of the sleeping tube. Waiting meant nothing to it, but it was not long before the pallet slid it headfirst out of the tube, into the throbbing twilight of the Hive.

It halted when it was halfway out, and it stared up through a latticed catwalk at a row of tubes like its own. There were others on either side of hers, but until its program or a new command impelled it, drone 602 had no will to look anywhere but straight ahead. There were catwalks and tube rows beyond, but a drone cared as little for space as for time, and it did not wonder about them.

Into its view leaned a nude, small-breasted drone, with its hair slicked back and gathered in a tight bun. The other drone was harnessed almost decoratively in a few narrow straps of black leather, and a wide collar spanned its neck. A large circular tag hung from the collar, steel-rimmed around bright green lacquer with 420 in large white numerals.

Drone 420 bent down, as expressionless as drone 602, and reached into a space in the pallet where drone 602 lay. It took out a tag marked “602” and attached it to drone 602’s collar. Then it straightened and stared into the distance, forgetting drone 602 completely.

Drone 602 stopped being aware of drone 420, too, and of the tag warming under its throat. It was orange, but would mean nothing to the drone. Besides designating it, it showed what code controlled it to anyone who might need to make it break task and obey new orders during the shift.

The pallet slid out all the way, and drone 420 responded by reaching for drone 602’s hands and helping it swing off the pallet and stand. They stared unseeingly into each other’s eyes while the tube slid back into the wall. It whined as it sealed and sanitized for the next offshift drone to replace drone 602 for reprogramming. The sound meant nothing to them, but triggered drone 602 to turn and head down the catwalk.

Two others joined it and they marched toward the exit of the Hive. They stepped through the inner door, stopped to be scanned, then out to a corridor. Its lighting was brighter than the Hive with none of the Hive’s hypnotic effects, but drones felt nothing upon leaving the Hive. Anxiety was a luxury for thinking minds, and they only left—as they only did anything—to obey.

They passed a small party of drones, some pushing carts of neatly-folded laundry, under the eye of an Owner in safari-girl kit. Just as she glanced incuriously at drone 602, a light on the ceiling began flashing.

The blue pulse had no effect on drone 602 or most of the others. But two of the women in the work party, wearing blue tags, fell instantly under its spell. They let go of their carts and snapped to glassy-eyed attention in the middle of the corridor. Swearing softly, the Owner snapped her fingers, bringing the rest of her slaves to a halt.

A voice from the ceiling spoke briefly. The two triggered drones, helpless in the grip of their coding as it overrode their current instructions, spun and marched back the way they’d come. The Owner made two of the others take the places of the ones who’d just obeyed Blue.

Drone 602 forgot it all a few moments later. It had no way of knowing if its companion drones remembered it, but it was barely aware of them as it was. The drone knew only the path it must walk and the straps on its body and the damp anticipation of commands it would soon obey.

Their internal programming brought them to a room where other drones stood awaiting commands and more arrived. Owners in brief khaki outfits handled the drones, checked dart guns and laced up boots.

Drone 602 found a spot, halted, and stopped thinking.

Screaming roused it. It was on a jungle path, content under the burden of pouches slung from its harness. There were Owners and other drones, and up ahead someone thrashed in a net over the path, swinging from an overhead branch.

One of the Owners unholstered her dart gun and casually swung it up, firing as she moved. Drone 602 saw the dart’s yellow fletching appear as though magically on a patch of skin in the netting, and the netted woman sighed into silence.

“Not a very hard shot, Cass,” said the other Owner. Her voice hummed through drone 602.

“No,” said the one with the gun. “Not much of a challenge. I just couldn’t stand that racket. I could hit something much farther . . .”

A wildly-pretty woman in a blue bikini panty and a green armband stepped out of the trees and went to the net. Cass glanced at her and then fired a dart to the side. In the trees, someone groaned softly and a body slumped. Ignoring it, Cass stepped to the Tribeswoman by the net.

“Do you want to buy this?” Cass asked her, poking the drugged one.

“She is Tribe.”

“She is ours.” Cass sounded pleased at the argument.

“No.”

Cass snapped her fingers. “Sleepy Eyes.”

The trigger snapped into drone 602’s head. It did not remember being renamed, but it moved instantly to the Owner’s side to stand in trance beside her.

“You are just a witless savage from the jungle, but I’ll humor you, because it’s such a hot, slow day.”

“Cass—”

“It’s fine. We can take them all. And if the idiots back there can’t solve the problem without this fucking—cattle drive—I don’t feel obliged to keep to the script anyway.

“How are you called, pretty savage?” But the Tribe girl shook her head.

“Pretty is a good enough name,” said Cass. “You’ll like it better after a few lessons.

“But I’ll buy this slut from you, Pretty. For some pretty things.” Drone 602 stood still like a draymare, blissful to be of use as the Owner took things from the pouch it carried. Cass showed them to the Tribeswoman.

“Oooooh . . .”

“Pretty?” Cass suggested.

“Pretty . . .” The Tribeswoman’s voice was slower, sleepier.

“See how they catch the colors?”

Drone 602 stood unmoving, as the native girl let Cass change her name.

“You are worth what I tell you.”

“I am worth what you tell me.” The Tribeswoman spoke in a monotone now.

“You are worth this bead. Look into it now, Pretty. See how empty it is? Just as your mind is empty except for the light my voice shines through it. The light doesn’t stay . . . it passes through. Just as your mind holds no ideas.

“Here is the bead you’re worth, Pretty. Take it now.”

The breeze was soft across drone 602’s skin as Cass hypnotized the woman into submission.

“I must obey you.”

“Yes. See how the ideas shine through your obedient little mind like the light? You must obey me. You won’t sell your friends to me for beads.

“You’ll give them to me for free.”

“. . . I . . . will give them to you.”

The Owners argued then, all of which buzzed past drone 602. It focused on the quiet breathing of the entranced Tribal slave, calm and half-asleep after promising to betray her friends. The newly-named Pretty was almost in synch with the girl in the net, who slept quietly, the yellow-fletched dart moving slightly as she breathed.

Something more lively rustled deeper in the trees, and the dart gun sang, twice.

“It’s all right,” Cass said. “Somebody just didn’t get enough of her trinket indoctrination. But this hypnotizes them all.”

The Owners bickered again. Then Cass spoke to the jungle.

“OK, little slavegirl. Little Tribeslut. Listen to your mistress. I have something here that will make you happy and sleepy.” She stepped into drone 602’s view, holding a bright whistle on a lanyard. “All you need to do is look when I tell you to.” She waited.

“Just watch. Watch and come to it. Come out to me and obey me.

“Now, slavegirl.”

“Not working, Cass. She thinks she—”

“No one told her to think. But if she insists . . .”

Cass turned to the woman she’d bewitched with the beads. “Pretty,” she said, in a vibrant quiet voice that even drone 602 felt in its pussy. “Obey me. Obey only me.”

“Cass? What are you—?”

“From the prebrief this morning. Pretty here’s a second-trip girl, Sophie. Already brainwashed. She’d die if I told her to. I can use her.

“You must obey, Pretty.”

“Must obey . . .”

“Mmmm, yes. You must.

“Believe now, Pretty: pain hypnotizes you, too.” Metal clinked. Drone 602 smelled lighter fluid.

“Pain . . . hypnotizes . . . me . . .”

There were whispered commands. Then Pretty screamed. There was a new smell of singed flesh. Pretty kept screaming.

When she stopped, panting in sobs, the Owner spoke again, more loudly. “That’s right. Just keep doing that every five seconds until I tell you to stop.

“And don’t faint.”

But whoever was in the jungle had heard enough screaming. Drone 602 heard them coming through the growth as Cass quietly told Pretty not to continue, and that she no longer felt pain.

Cass spoke again to Pretty. Pretty obediently told her Tribeswomen to come out and obey the Owners. They came, oblivious, falling easily into the bead-spell that had caught Pretty before.

A new Tribeswoman drifted onto the path with them. Over tear-tracks, her wide eyes were fixed on Cass’ lazily swinging whistle.

“I must obey you,” she said wearily.

After she walked past, drone 602 stopped thinking about her.