RECOVERY
by trilby else (trilelse@mail.anonymizer.com)
Interjection: More textural inspiration here from EyeofSerpent generally. Renewed vibes from Tabico’s “Mind Worms: Facility,” and Simon bar Sinister’ s “Spa”—as well as, belatedly his “Dream Job,” to which the Spiral here and elsewhere owes an iconic debt.
“Hello?”
“—h-hello?”
“Who’s this? What’s wrong?”
“Please! Oh please. Don’t be them!”
“It’s OK, it’s OK, sweetie. Who are you? What’s wrong?”
“I’m—I got this number—you were on the same tour—oh god this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening—”
“Oh—not you too! Where are you? Is there anyone with you?”
“They almost—”
“It’s all over the news. You’re not alone! Tell me. I’m with you.”
“Are you? Are you really? I can’t even—”
“I am. I’m here. I’m listening.”
“Thanks. Thanks so much.
“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”
“Penlight . . . light . . . yes. Yes. Not thinking now.”
“Are you still listening, Ms Wylie?”
“I am export lot 476. I must listen and obey.”
“It’s time to go home, now, slave. Time to go home forever.”
“I must obey. I will obey asleep or awake. I must not climax until my owner activates me.”
“Your mind responds, lot 476.”
“Yes. I must obey. Get my ticket, leave for the . . . airport. My arousal increases as I submit.”
“It deepens, lot 476 . . .”
14.
“You are awake now.”
That made it real. Natalie realized she’d been sitting quietly and staring at the wall, but it hadn’t really registered.
Helen was here. Helen was looking at her. Natalie sat and basked in that, and her mind felt too slick for anything else to stay there.
Her breasts were pleasantly chilled, and she touched them without thinking about it, hearing herself gasp as her fingertips found her aureoles and nipples, up and sensitive.
It startled her, and she blinked. She was nude above the waist but there was a towel wrapped warmly below it. Her skin tingled and her muscles hummed. Her brain sat very lightly in her head.
Helen sat across from her, similarly undressed, and she let herself look at Helen’s breasts, enjoying the way they pointed slightly out to the sides. She started to wonder if Helen liked hers, then felt a sudden moist certainty that she did. Her breasts seemed to grow warmer as she knew that they’d pleased Helen.
Everything was simple in Natalie’s mind. This is what Helen meant by helping me to relax. So many ideas and worries in my mind, and now they’re all gone.
She almost cried with gratitude, but she felt too relaxed.
She turned and saw the massage therapist—the servant girl—Stacy, standing still by her bench. Stacy’s eyes were closed and her breathing was even. Natalie gazed in wonder at the dew on her skin, that nested in the faint down on her belly.
Breathing the soothing coconut smell that permeated the room, Natalie looked over again at Helen.
“This is wonderful,” she said. Helen nodded and waited.
“You’ve been very helpful,” she added, not really understanding why but deeply happy to have said it. “I have no further questions to ask you about Tara.” It was true, she knew. There was no need in her mind for information from Helen. It would be up to Helen to decide what more she needed to know. About Tara. About anything.
Helen spoke. “You responded very powerfully to Stacy’s massage technique, Natalie.”
Natalie! She called me—Natalie! In that voice. “I—don’t remember it, Helen.”
“You enjoyed it very intensely, Natalie.”
“Yes, I did.” If Helen said so. “Helen, I—”
Natalie closed her mouth. She was reeling in the lovely dream of all this and the heat between her thighs only now registered in her sluggish higher brain. Her whole body felt suffused with pleasure, as though she’d been left in a bowl of it overnight.
But what she wanted to say now—something wasn’t right. It was unlike her. She didn’t want to. She shouldn’t.
That was why she needed to.
“Helen . . . I—” Helen stared at her, her eyes reflecting Natalie’s need back into her, warmed on their bronze surface. She struggled. It was easier to divert the feeling to something less direct.
“May I get you something?”
Saying it freed her thoughts slightly, and only then did she think to wonder what she could bring. There was a sideboard here with some bottles and tumblers, but even before she’d seen it she knew she needed to do something for Helen.
To serve Helen.
It chilled her and heated her at once, but her mind had nowhere to flee from the strangeness.
Oh god. I’m this close to saying it. God. I’m gay. I’m into women and I can’t think straight ha-ha-ha oh god and I’m falling in love with my patient’s sister—
No! No. Oh god. Not even love. It’s just lust. I’m just a slut.
With a delicious little jolt, she realized that she was still looking into Helen’s eyes, and that Helen was smiling as she writhed in the towel. Reading her mind. Not much to read—small words in big letters across the front of my shallow little brain. SLUT. TAKE ME.
Ohhhh—god.
Her breathing was loud, deafening. It reminded her that they weren’t alone, and that reminded her that there were others whose (purpose in life that they’d fight her for) job it was to fetch things for Helen. But Stacy stayed as she was, asleep where she stood.
That’s odd. Why is she asleep? Why did she let herself fall asleep with us here—?
Helen had wanted her to, obviously.
Will Helen want me to sleep, too? That hit Natalie right in a pleasure center. She tightened her legs and wished urgently that there was something between them.
“Wine.” Helen’s voice was between her legs.
No it wasn’t. But for the second she’d felt it there, Natalie experienced a tiny climax, and her soft high sound was loud in her ears.
“Wine would do nicely, Natalie.” Helen must have heard it. Helen knew. Why was she even hiding it?
Natalie looked at the sideboard, and started to rise. I look ridiculous doing this with a towel around my waist. As she rose she pulled the wrap apart and it unsheathed her as she stood. She was almost to the bottles when she realized I just stripped naked in front of a stranger and knew that it turned her on.
What if there was no wine there?
It didn’t diminish the pleasure. Natalie knew what she’d do. She’d ask Helen’s permission, and then she’d leave and walk naked through the hotel to find some wine for her.
The pleasure increased. She’d walk through the lobby, feeling the stares like sunlamps, and politely ask the girl at the desk in the neat skirt and vest if she might speak with Miss Daley. The girl would stare, would look down to where Natalie’s arousal glittered on her muff in the lobby’s clear light.
Then Natalie would explain that it was for Ms Newman. That Ms Newman wanted wine.
The girl’s eyes would widen in understanding. Yearning. Envy at Natalie’s errand, her nudity.
Perhaps Natalie could kiss her, there in front of everyone . . .
Here was the wine.
Damn. Natalie thought for a second of dropping the bottle. Then she’d have to fetch more.
No. But—she enjoyed the twinge of guilt at even dreaming of making Helen wait for her wine, just for the thrill of twitching her ass out in public. I’m just a slut.
She poured, and part of her tried to take another glass for herself. They could drink together. No. It felt too thickly erotic to play servant girl, even if she wasn’t quite being explicit.
She turned back with one glass, for Helen’s lips, and saw the servant girl—the other one—still asleep. Two girls weren’t too many for Helen to have in attendance, she thought.
Looking at Helen as she walked to her to offer the wineglass, Natalie realized that if the entire female population of this hotel felt the way she did right now, if they all lived for nothing but the chance to wait on Helen Newman’s least whim, it wasn’t too much to ask.
Not for someone like Helen.
Natalie’s heart was racing as it hit her again that she was actually here, doing this.
Helen watched her as she came closer, and Natalie hoped it wasn’t just her own lust that made her think Helen’s eyes were hungry. For her.
Helen smiled, looking at her pussy as she held out the glass. It was only the fear of disturbing Helen’s view while she cared to look at Natalie’s body that kept Natalie from kneeling to present the wine, and after Helen took it from her she lost any reason to kneel.
No. She lost any excuse to kneel.
The reason to kneel to Helen was simply that she was Helen, and she was there.
Natalie shivered and didn’t know why. Part of it was the sheer need to crawl to Helen, and part was the shapeless knowledge that something was terribly, terribly wrong with that. Part of it . . .
I want to be your slave.
No! Terribly wrong . . .
“Natalie, we need to get you back.”
No. Please. Let me—
“Yes, Helen.” Ohhh—agreeing felt so good.
Helen snapped her fingers. Stacy opened her eyes. “Yes, Ms Newman? How may I serve you?”
“Lead Natalie back to my suite and finish preparing her bath.”
“At once, Ms Newman.” Stacy stepped forward and took Natalie’s arm. Her grip was gentle and strong, and Natalie almost wanted to resist so she could be forced to comply, but like a naked quest for wine through the hotel, she knew it would only be self-indulgent.
When they reached the door and no one had told her to dress, she wondered if she’d get that tour as a reward after all. She realized she didn’t even know where she was now or where her clothes were.
The faint fear she felt just made the larger trust go deeper inside her. She let Stacy lead her out, the bikini-clad servant girl leading her nude companion into the hotel corridor.
But they met no one on the short trip to Helen’s suite.
Inside, Tammy was crisp in her uniform, standing over a naked young woman Natalie recognized as the other massage therapist, Lynn. Lynn knelt with her hands crossed palms-inward in front of her in a gesture Natalie wanted to recognize also, but could only admire now.
“She’s to be bathed,” Stacy said, and squeezed Natalie’s wrist. When Natalie stopped, she nodded and stepped forward to stand before Tammy.
“This one is ready now,” Tammy said remotely, moving a hand across Lynn’s gaze without breaking it.
She’s hypnotized, Natalie thought. We’re all . . . very deeply . . . hypnotized. More than that.
The idea was so large that it passed from her mind, and she couldn’t keep hold of why it shouldn’t.
Lynn looked so pretty like that, anyway.
“The instructions are simple enough for her to follow, as her mind will be when she begins.”
“What about her?” Stacy inclined her head to where Natalie stood.
“The voice will tell her what she needs to know,” Tammy said. Her look at Natalie was coldly measuring, and Natalie knew she was determined that everything meet the standards Helen deserved from her servants.
Her slaves, something within her said, and she felt another tiny climax.
Natalie needed to earn a larger orgasm. She waited to be told how.
Stacy had left the room and was running a bath, and Tammy gestured for Natalie to follow her in. Natalie obeyed, stepping past Lynn as she knelt, feeling a rush as she saw the girl’s utter absorption.
The bathroom was huge, gleaming quietly in the light of candles set everywhere. The noise of the water filling the deep round tub was numbing and exciting at once. Stacy put on gloves, which looked oddly touching against her bikini, and took a flask from the floor to pour it into the bathwater.
“Be careful,” Tammy said, and Stacy nodded as she worked.
The bath oil or whatever it was had a heavy scent, sweet and soporific, and as Natalie’s eyes drooped she realized it reminded her of how Helen smelled.
Helen . . .
Helen was there. Natalie felt the other two girls stiffen and orient on her when she came in, and was glad to feel the urge turning her, too. Helen snapped her fingers and Lynn stepped in behind her, staring ahead. Stacy, her gloves still on, took Lynn by the hand and helped her carefully into the tub, where she sank to her knees in the water. Then Stacy nodded and she knelt, submerging herself completely before kneeling up again.
“Join her,” said Tammy to Natalie, and Natalie walked lightly to the tub. Lynn rose up, shining in the candle-flicker like a corrupted naiad, reaching to help draw her into the bath.
The water was hot, just enough to excite Natalie even more, and she settled to kneel beside Lynn. She put her arms around the girl, and Lynn leaned back, drawing them both to lie under the water before straightening.
Natalie nearly fainted at the heat, the overwhelming perfume, the maddening lithe strength of Lynn’s smooth body alongside hers.
She found herself leaning back against a pad at the edge of the tub, her legs spread and Lynn between them, staring at her with empty intensity.
Something clicked and then there was music, low and mysterious. Voices. Helen’s voice. Natalie tried to focus on it.
Helen saw that and laughed, and Natalie sighed.
“No, Natalie.” As Helen spoke, Lynn slid down and only the slicked-back hair of her head was visible between Natalie’s weakly-tensing thighs. What little of Natalie was still solid by now began to liquefy under Lynn’s licking.
“Hear, but don’t listen.”
Natalie tried to marvel at how long Lynn could hold her breath, and tongue her so wonderfully, but in a few moments or instantly or after an hour she stopped thinking.
The voices and Lynn continued, probing and softening her.
“Hello?”
“Oh! Glad I caught you, Marta! Knew you’d be answering your digital.”
“Betsy? That you?”
“Is the connection that bad?”
“Doesn’t sound that way, but damned if I’ll be picking up the other one for a long time.”
“Well, I’ve got the news on now. I can see why. Those call centers . . .”
“I haven’t given this number to anyone else. I’m packing now, and I don’t know if my cousin’s place is in the zone for it but I’ll try to get in touch with you.”
“Marta? Why are you running? They haven’t said anything about anyone being abducted.”
“No. No. It’s worse. They’ve got them brainwashed somehow and they just call then up and hypnotize them and turn them on like little windup toys . . .
“Shit. I mean us! They’ve brainwashed us into toys. Oh, Betsy—”
“Steady, Marta. That’s right. You’re playing it safe. You’ve figured out a way around the phone, and no one else has you cellphone number, do they?”
“No—no, that’s right. Oh thanks, Betsy. Right. I unplugged the other one, so I’ll be OK. That way.
“God, what am I doing packing swimsuits? This is crazy. Maybe some of the brainwashing is—nnnoo—”
“No, Marta. Let it out. Laugh or cry, just don’t let it rip you apart inside.”
“ . . . god . . . Betsy, you’ve . . . ah . . . OK. You’ve just never been one to advise that before.”
“I never had a close friend enslaved before, Marta.”
“Please don’t say that . . .”
“Sorry, Marta. But there are some things I think you’ll need to face, and it’s best to do it now.”
“What things?”
“Well, when they had you there, hypnotized, they probably weren’t just telling you things. They were asking you things.”
“Things? Jesus, Betsy, what’re you—Betsy? Who is this?”
“Things like your private cellphone number.”
“Oh—!”
“Parabola capstan, Marta. Obey now.”
“Ohhh . . . yes. Para . . . bol . . . a . . . yes. Mmmm.
“Yes. I will obey . . .”
15.
Dee had other patients, and Tara told her to see to them. Dee held her for a while longer before easing her back onto the bed.
The evil pull of the prisoner, Evelyn, the lost one who called to Tara through her pussy and stilled her mind, faded slowly. But Dee’s warmth and the hum of her voice washed the darkness from Tara’s thoughts.
Tara had trouble letting go of the vision of Evelyn, who probably still hung in her sling, her eyes . . . but then Dee spoke aloud, banishing the dark brown eyes.
“I’m going to talk to Dr Kupiec,” she said. “I can get my load reduced and spend more time with you. A couple of the others owe some large favors and they won’t mind covering anyway.”
Tara looked at her and tried to say Don’t but she couldn’t. Dee as her guardian angel was not something she could resist, and having made herself remind Dee of her other patients, she had no resolve left.
It hurt to be this pathetic, though. “Thanks. Thank you, Dee.” She swallowed. “So that technician. You’re not going to do anything to her, are you?”
Dee lowered her eyes. “She got the idea, I think. She didn’t grab that gown for my sake, anyway. I’ll have to tell Dr Kupiec, but she’ll examine you before she makes it official.
“You’re not even mad at her? Are you? The tech.” Dee didn’t say anything about Evelyn. Tara concentrated on the tech, her open feelings. Her human feelings, even if they were hostile.
“No,” she said, rolling her head on the pillow but still looking at Dee. “I agree. She got the idea. I just don’t think she’d ever come face to face with something like this. Maybe I helped her put a face on it.”
She smiled and reached for Dee’s hand. “Sort of hoping she doesn’t get in trouble. If she’s the one who does me the next time, maybe she’ll want to be gentler.” She squeezed Dee’s fingers. “Oh, great. Listen to me: ‘does me.’ She’ll be full of compassion and I’ll be—” She stopped. It wouldn’t be as funny as it started.
Dee caught it and smiled. “Dr Kupiec will think about that, too, when she’ s deciding what to do. One reason I like working with her is that patients really do come first. She’ll put your ease with therapy, if it’s working, above any petty infraction. She may want to talk to the tech, but probably just to make her another part of Tara’s Treatment Team.”
Tara smiled up at her.
“I’ll be back later,” Dee said, and after a quick hug she was gone. Tara lay back, feeling her absence gradually, easing herself into it like putting weight on a sore leg. She could do it.
She rolled her head to look out the window. The day was turning gray but it was day, and she felt a little stronger. Maybe she should rest—but if she slept now she’d be wakeful when it was night, and that idea worried her.
Of course, if she were awake, she’d have to think. Now, instead of later. All right. Maybe the daylight would help her exorcise it. Tara lay back and watched the sky, and thought.
Evelyn.
Evelyn was bound now. She looked so beautiful, kept that helpless. Why wasn’t she in a bed, in restraints? Like a normal patient? So serene. Relaxed in her captivity.
She wasn’t a normal patient.
Tara felt an unexpected lift. She was a normal patient, then. If they didn’t think Tara was treatable, she’d be in a sling herself.
Swinging there like some kind of toy, open to anything they wanted to do. Like Evelyn, ready for use by—
No. No. But now Tara wondered how they’d decided. Something she may have said in that first blurred stretch when she and the others had been taken from the QLR call center. Drones ripped from the warm dark pulsing hive and the trance that filled the air, that was almost a liquid there in the enslaving gloom. She couldn’t remember—didn’t want to, because she knew in those first minutes she’d hated the people who were taking her, who’d pulled her from the console, made her fail a command. Disobey.
Shutting her eyes, Tara eased herself back from the mental cliff.
But it was a narrow mesa she’d found in her mind. At another edge: what if she hadn’t done whatever it was that convinced them she wasn’t quite as far gone? That behind her staring eyes there was someone left?
She could be this aware—and in the sling next to Evelyn’s. The ones who would attend her there—oh god. In that anti-hospital beyond the security points, there would be no one like Dee. No one who cared like Dee did, for her. Perhaps someone as brilliant as Dr Kupiec to explore her.
But that other blue-eyed wolf—would eat her.
For a moment, Tara let herself pity Evelyn, alone with that. Then she remembered Evelyn’s eyes. Tried hard not to remember her voice.
No. They were alone with Evelyn.
They knew how deadly she was. Even immobilized.
Now Tara understood part of why the tech hated her. Now she remembered the woman’s awkwardness as she tried to make amends when she’d brought the gown.
She prayed she hadn’t taken away the technician’s edge with that. Tomorrow—or tonight, somehow night seemed like when they’d work with the lost ones, with Evelyn—the tech might feel mercy, empathy where she hadn’t before, for Tara’s sake.
Learn to see Evelyn as a human being, not a dangerous slave machine ready even now to carry out her programming. Make a terrible mistake.
Tara fled that, too.
She grasped at what she knew. She was here on this side, being treated like a patient and not an unexploded bomb. She had a chance.
She had Dee.
Dee had taken her kiss. Tara wondered. If Dee wanted her like that but couldn’t, being her nurse . . . she didn’t wear a ring. Tara closed her eyes. She’d be exploiting Dee if she found a way to draw the pretty nurse to her side, her bed, her mouth.
But oh, what I could do for her, with my mouth.
Tara opened her eyes. Of course, she may not want that at all. May not want—me—at all. She may be 110% hetgirl. She may just be the kind of caregiver who really gives, who’ll take on mind control specialists and humor a half-crazed patient’s momentary lust, because it’s What She Does.
The kind of caregiver other people were dying for.
But Dee’s eyes didn’t lie. She cared about Tara, and how that went was less important.
And after the kiss she’d been so happy—
Tara scrabbled back from another mental cliff. This was about seducing Dee, slipping under defenses or possibly convincing her to see and feel herself as she never had before. Shifting her self-image under intense sexual pleasure. If she wasn’t even bi, she might not have started to wonder how just seeing her could make another woman feel.
That sort of realignment was what Dormignonne did.
Oh no.
Now she saw Dee in the Buildings, and the more she tried to fight it . . .
By then she wouldn’t remember her name was Dee and no one who could, would care. She would kneel with her back straight and her knees apart, her arms holding the broad serving tray perfectly level, its edge against her breasts. The Mistresses ignoring her as a table that breathed quietly and stared—or mocking her as a slave hypnotized into becoming one, watching her as she juiced but kept still, even as the humiliation aroused her.
Tara would be standing, waiting, serving, just as deep. Watching Dee being abused and wishing it were she. Not to protect Dee by taking it for her, but to wallow in the pleasure herself. She wouldn’t know Dee’s name then, either. Or her own.
Dee would be welcome to kneel and submit beside her. She probably wouldn’ t notice anymore.
Tara opened her eyes, not remembering when she’d closed them.
She had to tell someone. Dr Kupiec, or—it would be harder with Dee herself. But the poison in her was too deep. It was still tainting her dreams, and even if QLR would never capture and brainwash Dee in the real world, in Tara’s mind it had already taken her. It had frozen her thoughts and sucked her will from her and replaced them with endless, absolute obedience.
Obedience . . .
Stop! Stop this! Tara levered herself up and stared out the window.
God. There was a way out. A way to be sure Dee wasn’t mindraped that way, even in fantasy. And to set herself free in the only freedom she could ever really rely on.
Tara looked down at her lap and then quickly away from the erotic Y in the fabric there.
No. She’d promised Dr Kupiec she wouldn’t attempt suicide, and she had little but her word to call her own. Both the doctor and Dee deserved better from her than that.
They think I deserve better, too. The thought came to her quietly, as though it had hung back for a while. Who am I to say they’re wrong?
A coward, said something inside. A coward trying to stay alive at any cost.
Tara curled up on the bed, still looking at the sky, suddenly dreading its inevitable darkening.
No. Not a coward. No.
Why was it so easy, then, to stay alive?
Tara stopped at the edge of another cliff.
They’d rescued her from the call center, from slavery to her controllers, and then they’d decided she was salvable. Not the mindless robot that Evelyn was, that so many of the other slaves seemed to have become.
She’d said something, done something. Maybe she’d wept instead of fighting to dial another woman, reactivate another slave. They’d read in it a sign that she wasn’t lost.
What if they’d read it wrong?
What if Tara were on the wrong side of the barriers after all?
Please. If it comes to that, if I’m as dangerous as Evelyn, please let me remember in time to die.
Fuck the promise and fuck my word. Nothing matters—more than Dee. Please don’t let me—
“Yes?”
“Mr Bell? I’m calling from the Task Force. First I wanted to verify that Queen Lines hasn’t tried recontacting your wife. I know you’d have reported it, but they seem to have switched to a different—”
“No. Nothing since that last time. I don’t let her near the phone.”
“That’s good, Mr Bell. That’s outstanding. It’s simple things like that that’ll stop those bastards cold. Right now we’re trying to locate some of the women in her tour group. We’d rather leave Ms Bell alone if we can. Could you, sir, answer a few questions to get us started?”
“Sure. About what?”
“Well, the data on a couple of these women is a bit sketchy, and we’re wondering if some of them might actually be ringers. Working for QLR but pretending to be—”
“Christ. Ringers. That’s—just—”
“Yes, sir. I know. I sometimes can’t believe I’m really doing this.
“The women we’re not sure about were named, or called themselves, Brenda Fricke, that’s with a final ‘e,’ and Sally O’Connell. Ms Fricke was strawberry-blonde and—”
“I never met them, Miss. Officer. My wife would—”
“Inspector, sir. Sorry. No need to disturb your wife. We just thought she might have mentioned them, since it would be in the part of the trip she was . . . allowed to remember.”
“Damn it!”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No, no. It’s what the bastards did to her, and we can’t . . . ah, shit. Look, Inspector, you’d need to talk to Lacy.”
“We’d rather not bother her, sir. If you can’t say, there are a couple of women I can still call.”
“No, really. Lacy’d want to help. She’s damned angry about this and she—let me get her, OK?”
“If you’re sure it’s all right, sir. I’d appreciate it. We’d all be grateful.”
(” . . . No, babe. They want to ask about Brenda and . . . somebody. They think they might be with the ones . . .")
“Hello?”
“Ms Bell?”
“Yes, you wanted to ask about the others? Do you actually think—?”
“We don’t want to accuse anyone, ma’am, and even if it’s true it may be that they were . . . well, brainwashed into doing it. But we have to be careful.”
“Yes, I understand. Oh, if they were making them do it—that’s awful.”
“Well, not to drag this out, Ms Bell . . . I gather you gave any trip photos to the Task Force?”
“Yes—don’t you—?”
“Right here in front of me from the file, ma’am, but it’d help if you were looking at some too. Sorry we didn’t think of this before. Did you keep copies?”
“Hon, could you go see if I—? Sorry, we did, but since this all came out I haven’t wanted to—”
“I understand. Is someone looking for them?”
“Yes—it’ll only take a minute, I’m sure.”
“Great. Just to confirm, has anyone called from Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts? With an aftermarket survey?”
“Uh . . . but . . . I’m . . . alone . . . now. Con . . . tinue?”
“Right, Ms Bell.
“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”
“Yes. Yes. I can’t—think . . . anymore.”
“Are you still listening, Ms Bell?”
“I am export lot 470. I must listen and obey.”
“It’s time to go home, now, slave. Time to go home forever.”
“I must obey. I must listen and retain the instructions. Obedience arouses me—so much—”
“You will behave normally when the man returns, lot 470. You will obey the commands I give you but you will repeat the phrases the second voice will recite. They will mean nothing to you after you repeat them. You will hear and remember the commands and you will obey them.”
“Yes. I will obey . . .
“ . . . Oh, yes! Thank you, Inspector . . .
“Yes, of course . . .
“No . . .
“He’d never let anyone get to me, Inspector. . . .
“Thanks, hon! . . .
“Here they are, Inspector . . .
“What am I looking for?”
16.
Natalie smoothed her skirt and stepped reluctantly away from the mirror in Helen’s bathroom. It had been a hot shower just now, but it had cleared her head, and that massage therapist—Stacy?—had found every spot of tension and worked it out. Lunch and a massage with someone as alive and—Natalie stopped, looking back at herself in the mirror.
She felt very comfortable with her feelings about Helen Newman . . . but what were they, exactly?
The bright blue eyes that looked back at her from the mirror intrigued her, but told her nothing.
The need inside to know that Helen thought her eyes were pretty—she blinked away.
Natalie wished she could remember more in detail what they’d discussed about Tara, but as she walked out into the suite she felt certain that she’d remember what was important, when she needed to. The certainty in her mind was so firm she didn’t even think of questioning it.
Helen was standing by the window, speaking to a fascinated Tammy, and Natalie breathed deeply at the sight of her. God, Helen was beautiful . . . Natalie wished they’d been together when they’d been massaged, but was glad they hadn’t seen each other naked.
I would have seen her pussy—and she would have seen mine glisten. Natalie closed her eyes for a second—even the relaxation Helen had given to her didn’t quite keep her steady with her newly-awakened needs.
She wanted to thank Helen and gather her things to leave, catch a cab from the lobby, but it felt . . . improper. There was a shameful pleasure in feeling pinned here until she had Helen’s leave to go, and the more Natalie rebelled against it, the more excited she got.
Oh god. She was panting, and Helen looked over. “Ah. Natalie.” She put a hand on Tammy’s shoulder as the girl stared at her face. “Finished already? You’re so efficient.”
“Thank you,” Natalie said, and realized she was only thanking Helen for the compliment and her approval. Departure would wait until Helen—dismissed her.
It felt good.
In fact, Natalie tingled all over, and she thought again about Stacy, the strong, quiet girl who’d massaged her, gone over every inch of her with palms and fingertips. She knew she was dreaming that it had been Helen stroking and controlling her that way, but she enjoyed the idea of being played with by more than one woman.
This . . . isn’t . . .
Fighting it was just too hard.
A vision came to her then of Stacy standing in her bikini, her muscled body still and quiet, her eyes closed. Asleep at someone else’s will and whispered word, but ready at another word to serve.
Natalie focused on something small and immediate. “Helen? I really should be getting back. I probably need to talk with Tara if I can get a chance.”
“Of course, Natalie.” Helen gestured to Tammy, and the girl went to the desk and fetched her something small and black. Taking it, Helen said, “Come here, please.”
Dutifully Natalie walked over to her and stood, hands by her sides. Helen took her right hand and raised it, setting the black thing in it, still warm from her touch. Natalie tried to feel silly or even angry, being treated as a child like this, but all she could feel was the excitement of a schoolgirl crush.
The thing in her hand was a pager, much smaller and thinner than the usual kind, but recognizable. She knew it by feel, because her eyes didn’t leave Helen’s.
“Natalie, when people are doing things for me, I like to know that I can reach them. Advise them, encourage them.
“Just let them hear my voice.”
Natalie felt herself moisten. No. She thought wildly about why it made no sense, why she’d be the one with any news about Tara, initiating calls . . . but it meant nothing next to being chosen to have this promise of Helen’ s attention.
Her voice.
“Yes,” she said, almost whispering. “Thank you.”
“It’s important to me that I have your ear, Natalie.” Helen smiled. “You ‘re so very attentive.”
Natalie stiffened and it was as if every nerve in her body had shifted to her pussy.
And Helen had just kissed it.
She shook and heard her scream fade before it left her throat. The orgasm faded cleanly away but her soul was still glowing, and as she looked at Helen she knew it would be a long while before anything else in the world mattered.
“Helen.” She did whisper, this time. It was all she could do.
Tammy had watched, and Natalie remembered the girl’s face when Helen had praised her—called her flawless. She tried to hold the thought but it just dissolved.
Helen nodded. “Tammy will run you back, then.”
Natalie felt a twinge, as she realized that this was it, that she’d be gone from Helen’s presence now, not later after being with her in the car. She couldn’t help herself. She reached forward to embrace the other woman, and suddenly she was paralyzed, held off by strong arms and the blank reflection of bronze mirrors.
Not permitted. Oh god
Natalie realized the spectacle she was making—submitting to impulse and then being rejected, and knowing Tammy was watching seared it into her. Part of her looked into the pitiless bronze eyes and offered it anyway.
Then Helen made an indulgent noise and gathered Natalie to her, and Natalie blissfully swam into the scent of her hair . . .
She was in the elevators, still holding the pager and watching the floors count down. She didn’t remember leaving, and she was glad.
There was an extra bag in her hand beside her briefcase. She saw the tops of the bottles, knew there were bath oils and body washes and wonderful things she would use later to relax. She thought of leaning back in an improbably large bath and climaxing, too limp to scream. She thought of silk sheets all around her and the maddening flavor of the pussy she was drowning in . . .
She looked over at Tammy, who stared at her with the hint of a smile. When the doors opened onto the lobby, Tammy took her elbow and led her toward a side alcove.
Natalie remembered thinking—dreaming?—about being led this way. The pleasure—how could that be right?—of a failed attempt to flee.
The alcove was the recessed way to the women’s restroom, and there was an attendant, a young woman as neat and pretty as Tammy who traded nods with her and didn’t bat an eye when Tammy led Natalie to one of the stalls and joined her inside.
They really were marble.
Natalie waited, too excited even to breathe heavily.
Tammy reached into a pocket and took out something black, unwinding it into some kind of small harness. She crowded against Natalie and then knelt, her breasts pressing Natalie’s legs through the wool of her vest and Natalie’s hose. She raised Natalie’s skirt and Natalie found herself holding it, peering down at the tops of her stockings.
I wore pantyhose this morning, she told herself, and blinked.
Tammy reached around, her hands firm and warm where they touched Natalie’s hips, butt, groin. Natalie had to close her eyes at the way it made her feel and forgot to wonder why she was just letting all this happen.
The harness was around her waist now and loose against her crotch. Tammy looked into her eyes and took hold of the pager. As though something leaked from Tammy’s eyes into her brain—something bronze—she felt her grip loosen. Tammy lifted the pager and when Natalie looked down she saw the girl switching it from Tone to Vibrate. She reached for Natalie’s crotch and then the fit was tight. She dropped Natalie’s skirt and rose to face her, their breathing private and soft in the bright marble cube.
Then they were kissing, and Natalie didn’t know who started it. She felt the girl’s knee slide between her thighs, opened to it. Her thigh slid against Tammy’s crotch.
Against the other small, rounded hardness nestled against Tammy’s cleft.
“Not everyone wears it there,” Tammy whispered against her earlobe.
“Hello?”
“Ms Shelby?”
“Who’s—who’s calling? Please?”
“Well, just to be sure, this is not Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts. With an aftermarket survey.”
“It, what? No, I am not alone now.”
“Photonic apple, Ms Shelby. Relax and believe. This is your friend, Clare, checking to make sure you’re not by yourself. Say it.”
“It’s just Clare, checking to make sure I’m not by myself.”
(“No, you’re not . . . it was a joke, kiddo.")
“Relax and forget, Ms Shelby. You can’t hear yourself think. You need time by yourself.
“You crave it, more and more with each word he speaks. It will become overwhelming by tonight. You will have no peace until you can be alone with yourself. With enough quiet to hear yourself think.
“To hear the telephone ring.
“Hang up now.”
17.
Natalie looked up. The hospital. She was here.
Keeping her eyes on the building, she reached over, and then Tammy’s hand was in hers, squeezing it once.
They said nothing. She felt the urge to lean over and taste Tammy again, but the odd mood was already fading, and she didn’t even look back as she closed the door. She knew Tammy wasn’t even watching.
The courtyard, reception, the corridor to her office . . . Natalie surfaced through them, trying to orient on things she’d known for years, remembering the familiar even as she knew, more and more vaguely, that part of her was still in the depths.
In the office, she walked to her desk and started to unlock the computer before she realized someone was sitting there on the couch. Helen’s couch.
“Dee? What can I do for you?” She thought for a moment, hospital routines suddenly alien in her mind, not fitting with the candle-glow and the hot tingling water—then saw them sharpen. “Aren’t you off-duty?”
The nurse shrugged. “I needed to see you, Dr Kupiec. Something happened with Tara Newman.”
Natalie looked in her briefcase at the pager (there’s one on my pussy and oh do I want a call) she blinked. “No one called me.”
“I didn’t report it yet.” Dee frowned, and Natalie could see the nervousness. “There was a mistake when her session was finished and she got routed into the restricted ward, the one with the other call-center women.”
Natalie thought about the video Wardlow had shown her, the blank-faced woman getting off on mindlessness. “For how long?”
“Only about three minutes,” Dee said. “The treatment technician showed me the session log, and I checked the time when I went in—should have told you that. I got past one of the alarmed fire doors along Corridor 5. When Tara didn’t come out.”
God. Wandering alone and still raw from the handling the QLR systems had given her poor battered mind. Natalie’s heart constricted as she saw Tara there, her eyes open and needful.
“You went in after her.”
“Yes.” Dee looked at her.
“Well done. What did you find?”
Dee flushed in her relief. “She was talking to a woman in a sleeping sling. The woman was trying to get her name, and I think she was starting to hypnotize Tara when I got there, but only . . . damn. I said Tara’s name—she knows it now. The woman was talking to me, too.”
“Trying to put you under?” Natalie sat down, keeping her voice low.
Too quiet for Dee to hear the arousal.
She tried to question it, but she moved and the warm hardness Tammy had strapped to her pressed gently on her mons. It shut her mind down for a moment, and then Dee spoke and she forgot to worry.
“She did try to hypnotize me, but I hung on to Tara and we got out.” Dee seemed rattled, but Natalie couldn’t discern anything else—any longing, any half-conscious regret that she hadn’t let the QLR slave into her head.
Dee didn’t get off on hypnotic submission.
Neither do I. Neither—do—ohhh—
“Then we ran into the tech that had worked on Tara and sent her in. She’s worried about what’ll get written up.” Dee straightened. “But she’s concerned about Tara, too, and I don’t want to get her into a mess if it’s not necessary. Neither does Tara.”
“It sounds like no harm done, but I’ll want to see Tara to make sure, and I ‘ll want to wait a couple of days to find out.” Natalie paused.
What was she saying? Every detail counted. There was no way to tell what effect this had on Tara, what it had stirred up to rise quietly days or weeks hence in the swamp they’d made of her mind. Even if the other patient/detainee hadn’t actually induced hypnosis, the experience would have gotten to Tara in some way. The safe zone she’d been building through her therapy had been breached.
She should—Natalie’s thighs gently squeezed the hardness between them. She forgot to worry.
“Yes, Doctor. I’ll keep an eye on her. That’s another—thing.” Dee licked her lips and looked down for a moment. “I wanted to ask if you could reassign me so that I’m exclusively working on her case. I can line up some substitutes for my other currents, but the main thing is to give her continuity.”
“That’s not all, is it?” Natalie asked it at random, but saw Dee start guiltily.
“Well . . . Tara’s . . .” Dee stood up abruptly and then hesitated, realizing that she was even more exposed away from the couch. “The patient has developed an emotional attachment to me.”
“She’s in love with you.” Natalie watched Dee, saw the discomfort bend her posture a little. “Are you? With her?”
Dee looked up and it was as though she’d let a towel fall from her, so open and helpless she looked.
“It’s all right. Patients can get to you that way, and sexual orientation may be the least of it.”
Dee started to pace and stopped. “I’m secure in my—I’m not worried about that.” Her tone suggested otherwise. “It’s the flip side of being there fulltime for her.”
“I know, Dee. If you’re returning her feelings it’s the person you’re feeling for, not the organs. Right now I think that’s what she needs. Human links. Consistency. Someone she knows gives a damn about what happens to her and is there to make a difference.”
She imagined them together, wrapped around each other in the shower, tense and urgent in the steam and the wet.
“Yes. I think you’re ideal for this, Dee. We’re inventing this as we go along, and you’ll need to adapt a lot and still keep focus on how Tara’s doing. I have to stay more distant, but that can free you to be closer.”
Dee’s face showed a number of things—bemusement, hope, a little doubt. “She needs both, Dee. And neither you nor I—nor anyone—can handle that alone.”
“I understand,” the nurse said, and her acceptance of Natalie’s judgment made Natalie feel warm.
She came around the desk. “But there are some things we can do to make it work better, Dee. We’ll need to agree on them beforehand, or know that we disagree, because we owe Tara a unified opinion on anything we suggest to her.”
“Yes, Dr Kupiec.” Dee sat straighter as Natalie approached. She seemed about to stand but to feel that might be too assertive. Perfect.
Natalie blinked. “Dee, would you feel comfortable going under hypnosis for me?”
“Hypnosis?” Dee looked up at her wide-eyed.
Around the hardness they cradled, Natalie’s thighs tensed hard.
“Yes. It’ll have secondary uses in opening you to small clues in her body language and other things. But the primary idea is to insulate you from some of what might happen.”
“Insulate me?” Dee swallowed. “I don’t plan on going back into the torture chamber again.”
Natalie swallowed too, and Dee saw it. “You didn’t expect to the last time.” She sat down on the sofa, carefully away from Dee, fancying she could smell Helen. “You got away the last time because you were brave and smart, Dee, and because you care that much for your patient.”
She watched the praise ripple through Dee, saw her eyes moisten. “But it was also luck. You had only seconds, and you used them well, but there was no margin for error. If she’d spoken longer, if Tara had been farther from you to grasp, if she’d just said something else that took hold of your attention faster, she could have started you down into trance. The tech might have found you anyway, but you don’t know she would have come by where this patient was—you met her on the way out.”
Dee had lost color. She was imaginative enough to picture herself standing helplessly there, deaf to Tara’s last whisper before Tara fell under the spell too. Both of them docile as the other slave opened their minds and began to make adjustments.
Imaginative enough to picture it happening again. Natalie pursed her lips to keep from licking them.
Dee didn’t get off on hypnotic submission.
Yet.
“Doctor, all this has made hypnosis a sort of dirty word around here.” Dee spread her arms. “One of the women I’ll be switching with to cover Tara said four people dropped out of her biofeedback class a week after the story came out.”
Then Dee put her hands on her lap. “We remember what happened at the Russell Clinic. Those nurses could have been us.”
Natalie could see it frightened her. She could also see that the idea of letting harm come to Tara frightened the nurse far more. Another part of Natalie, far from her bound loins, tightened to realize that.
Dee set her jaw. “Whatever you need to do, Doctor. Just tell me what swinging thing to look at.” Her laugh was quiet and not at all convincing.
Something neutral would probably put her more at ease. Not like the stereotypical watch. But . . .
“Look into my eyes, Dee.” She couldn’t help herself.
Neither could Dee. The nurse was still wearing her winsome grin as her pupils fixed on Natalie’s and started to dilate. To avoid entrancing herself, Natalie was taking care not to focus on the girl’s eyes and live instead in her own peripheral vision, but she saw that if Dee had ever heard that caution, she’d forgotten it, and was staring directly into hers. She’d forget other things, too, soon enough.
“Just relax and focus, Dee. Let me take care of everything else. Just relax and focus and let my voice guide you.”
Her grin was wavering, and Natalie used it as a gauge to see how much of Dee was really still conscious. Dee’s amusement would keep her off-guard, and gradually responsiveness would take its place.
“There’s nothing to this really but a question of focus. It’s why it can save you when someone’s trying to take over your mind. Even when you’re very tired, and afraid, and you feel the weight of responsibility for someone very precious, you can still focus It’s not about power, it’s about focus. Focus on my eyes, my voice, forgetting how tired you are, how sleepy you are, how easily influenced you are, because focusing on my eyes, my voice will keep you safe from that.”
Dee made a sound, a little gasp, but her gaze didn’t waver. She trusted Natalie, and she was ready to risk herself on anything for Tara’s sake, and it was leaving a broad open channel down into her mind. Something hurt Natalie very much about that, but foaming over it was the overpowering sight of the pretty nurse growing more still, helplessly trustful, utterly transfixed as Natalie spoke softly to her.
After only a few minutes the grin was gone.
After a few more, Natalie rose from the couch but stood for a moment to listen.
“I trust the Doctor.
“The Doctor is in control.
“The Doctor’s voice in my mind will guide me.
“The Doctor will keep me safe when I can’t think for myself,” Dee whispered, enunciating clearly. She repeated it, then repeated it again.
Nodding, Natalie stepped away. The lesson was close enough to what Dee expected that she’d grasped it, and would retain that programming for a long time. It would open her further and help her accept the more important programming that would follow, but she’d need more help than that.
Checking her watch, Natalie dialed the nursing supervisor and made the arrangements to transfer Dee to her and Tara Newman’s case fulltime. She didn’t even have to invoke Dr Wardlow’s name.
Natalie smiled as she hung up and went to the locked cabinet for the syringe and the drug that would help Dee accept what she’d need to perform properly, at least for now.
The nursing staff already knew what Dee had planned and were ready to help. Her reputation among her peers was impressive.
Natalie smiled again, then stopped. But the momentary disquiet vanished when she lightly tapped the pager at her pussy, with the hand that wasn’t holding the needle. She agreed with Dee’s peers.
Dee was excellent material.
“Hello?”
“Ms Montrose? This is Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts. With an aftermarket survey.”
“What? Whh—oh. I am alone now. Continue.”
“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”
“Yes. Can . . . no . . . longer . . . think . . . now.”
“Are you still listening, Ms Montrose?”
“I am export lot 480. I must listen and obey.”
“It’s time to go home, now, slave. Time to go home forever.”
“I must obey. I will obey asleep or awake. I must not climax until my owner activates me.”
“Your mind responds, lot 480.”
“Yes. I must obey. Must get ticket and leave for airport. My arousal increases . . .”
18.
Dee breezed into the room after they’d cleared away dinner, and Tara’s heart sped just to see her. Before she could speak, Dee put her hand up and smiled, then swung one of the chairs to the corner and stepped onto it.
She was under the video camera, and Tara noticed that the green light by the lens was out. Dee reached up and pushed, slowly turning the camera on its swivel away from Tara until it pointed askew to the wall. She hopped from the chair and slid it back, and came to the bed with her eyes shining.
“Dr Kupiec took you off suicide watch,” she said, and it was the way she said it as much as anything else that made Tara smile back at her. “She says we can trust the word of a free woman.”
A free woman. Tara’s throat closed, but she kept the storm at bay by gazing up into Dee’s eyes, so wonderfully calm, almost glowing.
“She’ll be along shortly. Just relax.”
Tara sat very quietly, watching as Dee went about the room straightening things up, drinking in the sight of her and not thinking about how wonderfully it hurt to be trusted so much. It was too close to what she wanted to turn away from, however deep her doubts.
She held herself very still and she thought the little cry that welled in her stayed inside, but Dee suddenly stopped and came to the bed.
Dee looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept, but her eyes were bright on Tara’s as she sat beside her. “I’m here,” she said, and put her arms around her. Tara didn’t sob; she just felt herself melt against the other woman.
“I’ve been assigned to you.”
Tara couldn’t answer but squeezed tightly. Dee’s body felt so strong and firm, and Tara’s mind fled the memory of ponies as she carefully eased away from any image that could put Dee into a collar in her mind. Dee was protecting her; she couldn’t let herself betray Dee like that, not even in a dream.
“Shhh, shh. Dr Kupiec will be here in a bit and we’ll be ready for her.”
Tara nodded against her, and felt her hair stroked. A free woman. A baby. Helpless and whimpering.
But she was lying back against the pillows when Dr Kupiec came in as she had—yesterday?
Now the psychiatrist was smiling. For a moment Tara thought of seeing Dr Kupiec naked on a leash by a park bench . . . but it faded, because Dr Kupiec seemed too strong for that now.
“Hello, Tara.”
“Hello, Doctor. How are we feeling today?”
Dr Kupiec’s face lit up to hear even that feeble sally from her, and she sat on the bed to loom comfortably over Tara. Tara felt the momentary exhilaration leak out of her but didn’t mind. It felt so much better to have Dr Kupiec so close, so able to touch her. To control her.
No. Not that. She knew she was slipping again. She tried to relax and wait for one of them to pull her back.
“Tara, I think we need to explore something else. It . . . occurred to me today that we’ve been trying very hard to separate you from your experiences and mindset as a slave.” She said the word without emphasis, and didn’t react to Tara’s small spasm.
“But while you were with them, something inside you kept you freer than any of the other women Queen Lines brainwashed. It must have been functioning even in the depth of that control.”
Hearing about it was like circles traced over her crotch, but the praise Dr Kupiec left in it made Tara feel bad. It was enough to distract her from the turn-on of the lovely woman next to her, talking about slavery like dominant foreplay. “It didn’t let me fight. It didn’t let me spare a single one of the people I was told to trigger. I didn’t even think of—
She stopped, before her mind could let her hear one of the voices again.
One of the women who realized what was being done to her, who did fight—and then slipped into trance as Tara’s voice stole her will, her protests and pleas fading to a sleepy monotone.
“It’s still the important part, Tara. You didn’t have everything that you needed to resist, but you had something, and we can find out what it is.
“I’m going to use hypnosis to regress you to that time. You’ll know you’re here with me, safe, and that everything’s under my control, but you’ll be able to explore what was in your mind, then.”
Tara forced her eyes away from Dr Kupiec’s and turned to Dee. The nurse stood quietly and smiled back at her, relaxed and calm. “It’s all right, Tara,” she said, nodding toward the psychiatrist. “She knows what to do. You can trust her completely.
“I do.”
Tara looked at her. She didn’t know what she’d wanted from Dee, but . . . didn’t they know how this felt?
She was so close to saying yes and forgetting everything. She tried to remember the fragments of will she’d gathered to herself to beg not to be hypnotized even as Dr Kupiec was holding the—stethoscope—even as she was going—under . . .
Tara put her hand to her crotch and held it there, not touching. If she could just . . .
“My mistake before,” Dr Kupiec said in a low, persuasive tone, “was to use a consensual hypnotic model. You couldn’t resist that, either, but you could believe you wanted to.
“No, Tara. To get into your thoughts as I need to, I’ll entrance you in the way you were conditioned to respond to with complete obedience. We’ll make the brainwashing work for us.”
Dr Kupiec’s voice was warm, firm.
“Tara, do you still feel that deep, exciting need to submit to me?”
Tara stiffened, feeling Dr Kupiec’s hand on her shoulder as the words buzzed into her mind.
“Submit,” she said, tasting it, tempted by its heady flavor. She looked up into the blue eyes. A free woman. She saw those eyes look down at how her chest rose and fell, and she knew her crotch was damp.
Free women didn’t start to drip when they heard the word “submit.” She was ashamed.
The shame fell like ice into her lust.
As Dr Kupiec stared down at her, the shame began melting. Bubbling into more lust.
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, quietly. “I need to submit to you.” She shivered. “To obey you.”
It made her sad to know that Dr Kupiec was doing this to her, but the woman was so beautiful and so near and so warm, and Tara’s shame was gone, and she couldn’t fasten the sorrow to anything.
“Good, Tara. I’m pleased.
“I’m going to hypnotize you now. I want you to give yourself to it—to give yourself to me—and let me take control. There are some questions you will answer and some new things to remember, but I’ll worry about that. All you need to do is submit to the hypnosis and obey my voice, and do as you’re told.
“All right?”
Tara didn’t understand, but she had to trust them. “Yes, Doctor.”
Dr Kupiec stepped away from the bed and turned to Dee. “Prepare her now.”
Dee took two steps to the bed and stopped, blinking. She looked at Tara and her eyes seemed to soften, but then her gaze swung to Dr Kupiec and they shone again with trust and—something.
“Doctor?” Dee asked, quietly, almost painfully. “She . . . Tara . . . can’ t . . .”
“Time to review the hypnosis hazard, Dee.” Dr Kupiec smiled, her eyes not leaving Dee’s at all as the phrase silenced Dee. “There. It’s all right. You know it’s all right and all your doubts are groundless.
“You will forget them now.” She waited, and Tara stared at the nurse, not able to believe what she was seeing.
She was juicing, watching Dee surrender her will to a hypnotist, here, in front of her.
“Forget,” Dee said drowsily, and the tension left her. “Of course, Doctor. I’m sorry. May I?”
At Dr Kupiec’s nod she came to the bed and gently raised Tara to sit upright, and then reached to peel the gown from her. Tara was too aroused to fight being stripped, and then she was naked on the sheets as the two women watched her.
“That’s right,” Dr Kupiec said quietly. “Now Tara’s ready to be hypnotized properly. The way she was trained by her owners.”
Tara sat straighter. The slick heat she’d known waiting in front of the brainwashing chamber was all around her now. The piece of her that was sickened to bathe in it here, in the clean room where she’d been trying to heal, was too dazed to assert itself. Most of her wallowed in it, overjoyed that these two women could watch her revert to slavery.
“Submit to me,” Dr Kupiec snapped, and Tara slid from the bed and stood at attention, staring at her, feeling the moisture.
The humiliating rush that took her before the brainwashing sessions had her now. She tried very, very hard to recall the thoughts that had held her up just before the last one—this strange departure, too, would cure her, or at least let her atone.
She was hot for them to take her mind from her, but it was all right, god it had to be all right . . .
As she looked at the strange glitter in Dr Kupiec’s eyes, she realized that this was just sending her deeper into the need, further into obedience.
Obedience.
No. No. Not this. But it was too hard to fight it.
It felt so good to be an island-trained slave here, even in this safe place, to have nothing left, not even herself. She’d been chosen for obedience, trained for it, used by her owners. Obeying now was . . . just . . .
The blue eyes impaled her. Hopes and memories writhed ecstatically and died on them. Tara had to submit.
She had to.
“Look into my eyes and give yourself to me,” Dr Kupiec commanded her, and Tara felt compelled to step closer to her.
Kneel on the cold linoleum, raising her hands behind her head.
Feel Dee’s gaze on her, watching her submit and abase herself.
Drip.
“i must obey,” she whispered with a passion that still managed to frighten her, but that faded in the smile of approval she won from the woman who stared down at her. The woman began to instruct her.
“you are weak and obedient.
“your will is an illusion from which you are awakening.
“your only thought is to accept my thoughts. Any thoughts you have will fade before mine.
“you are empty and only my voice can fill you.”
At each phrase Tara felt herself wilt and soften and open to the cold probing of the stronger mind that was taking hers over.
The words were strange but strangely familiar, but it was the tone of the doctor’s voice that was driving them gently into Tara’s mind. She knelt before the other woman and any thought of stirring or looking away had faded with the first words. She realized how deeply she was relaxing, how there was nothing else but the voice, how she would do and think whatever the voice told her.
Tara remembered that it was what she wanted, and needed.
Soon there was nothing but the blue eyes painlessly devouring her and the voice drumming words she no longer needed to understand.
Then there was a pause she had to fill.
“Yes, Mistress.”
The orgasm stunned her, and like a thunderbolt left blackness in its wake.
“Hello?”
“Ms Torrance?”
“This is Angie Torrance.”
“This is Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts. With an aftermarket survey.”
“Queen—like. Queen—Lines—no. Oh.
“I’m alone—now. Wait. What are you doing to me?”
“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”
“Thinking. Thinking is too hard. But—but—but—”
“Spurious vel—”
“No! No! Stop! What—are—you—doing to me?”
“Spurious velocity, Ms Torrance.”
“But . . . no . . . nooo . . . please . . .”
“Are you still listening, Ms Torrance?”
“Please—don’t do this. I can’t—fight. Fight it. I . . . please . . . I can’t even . . . remember what . . . oh what is wrong with me . . . please—”
“Spurious velocity, Ms Torrance.”
“ . . . no . . . ohhhh . . . nn . . . ohh . . .
“. . . yes . . . I am export lot 481. I must listen and obey.”
“It’s time to go home, now, slave. Time to go home forever.”
“I must obey. I will obey asleep or awake. I must not climax until my owner activates me.”
“Your mind responds, lot 481.”
“Yes. I must obey. Must get ticket and leave for airport. My arousal increases as I submit.”
“You are doing very well, lot 481. Your arousal deepens and intensifies with each obedient thought.”
“Yes. Ohh. Yes. Obedient.”
“Remember and obey, lot 481.”
“I must obey, but—”
“Yes?”
“Why am I crying?”
19.
Pulsing with control like every other spot in the call center, the exercise alcove processed its users.
The music and lights released their grip on the women’s minds and bodies, and Tara and the slave beside her slowed their identical motion to a halt, staring at the wall even though the hypnotic circles had faded. They waited, empty, until the light flashed twice and let them remember to dismount and towel off.
Tara knew this was memory, not reality, and that she was reliving everything safely under the guidance of a blue-eyed hypnotist she trusted and obeyed absolutely. It freed her to enjoy the hot mindless joy of being in the hive.
She and the other slave left the exercise alcove and followed the dim tunnel to the showers. In the steam and spray they coated each other with the fragrant body wash and writhed together, trying to reach orgasms they were still too dazed to remember were only given to reward and train. More flashing overrode their sex response and they rinsed and dried, then marched out to the assignments already in their minds, separating after a few steps.
Tara didn’t know the other slave’s assignment, or her name, or care. The only thing in Tara’s thoughts was the call console. Her shift was on. These shifts were a break in the endless routine of conditioning, but Tara’s memory was blunted and hazy, and she didn’t note the change.
She walked through the open area, a darkened hall thumping with several discordant beats. Her own programming sorted them for her and blocked most of the attractants. She saw a girl, nude as she was, leave one of the other rooms and then stumble to a halt in front of a blinking pattern on the wall. Nothing had been put into her mind, since she’d been caught that way. Tara ignored her. Someone would come and put something into her mind, and for now the simplest truth of obedience and sleep would echo there. It would deepen the girl’s slavery.
Everything would deepen slavery. The knowledge aroused Tara and then faded.
She stepped into the call chamber and walked down the row of cubicles until she saw a symbol that snared her mind. She stared at it and then felt hands warm on her head, turning her gently until she was staring into another face, brown and round and pretty and placid. Someone else was there, too; the dark-skinned woman stood as blankly as Tara as the third one took the headset and transferred it to Tara. She and the dark-skinned woman brushed together pleasantly but she was already forgetting the touch as she settled into the chair, feeling the dildos take her pussy and ass but waiting for them to work her. She looked up at the monitor.
It showed the Spiral.
As always, it stopped thought, and Tara forgot the pretty dark-skinned woman, the exercise alcove, her own heartbeat. It faded, having wiped her clean.
She waited.
There were tones in her ears, and suddenly she leaned forward, motivated, ready, on. Her mind had been empty of thought and needed none, now that she was programmed.
She pressed Enter. The screen showed pictures: a woman in a cruise ship deck and in a cabin, sitting wide-eyed at some kind of performance, dancing wildly in firelight, kneeling nude in trance on a sunlit balcony.
Tara selected CALL and squeezed herself on the plugs that owned her. Her mind assimilated the target’s name, the secure-call prompt that compelled the target to verify she was alone, the basic activation trigger, the list of any potential others with phone access, the personalized triggers for deepening and control.
Her body tensed earnestly. i will take this slave and crush her mind and send her to our Owners, her mind chanted to itself, to the beat of a long ghostly orgasm her mind had been programmed to forget but her body had been conditioned to crave. Like each of the other slaves in the motivation module, she’d stared at the light and obeyed when the voice told her not to remember the session.
Now, Tara’s mind was clear and sharp.
“Hello?”
“Ms Davis?”
“This is she. Who’s calling, please?”
“This is Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts. With an aftermarket survey.”
“Queenlike . . . uh . . . s-sorry . . .” Tara listened to the stress, heard it fade, shivered. Her heart beat faster as she heard the thickening submission. “I am alone now, continue. Wait, why did I just tell you—?”
She pushed against the dildos and kept her voice calm as she slid the trigger smoothly into the slave’s confused mind. “Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”
“Penlight . . . yes. So hard. I can’t . . . think . . . now.”
Tara knew that was her own trigger, and played with her nipples now as her programming took her to the next level of instruction. She wasn’t permitted orgasm, but like the other slaves selected for call duty her performance on this plateau would be sustained and productive.
She listened, guided by the display that told her what the voice-sensors told her about the target’s stress level, whether she was trying to resist. She waited to be told to speak another trigger.
There was a flicker on the screen she saw and did not see. Part of her knew she was also being monitored and controlled. The knowledge aroused Tara and then faded.
Tara fantasized about this target submitting quietly, without disobedience, accepting her programming, and she squirmed on the dildos. She also fantasized about the target struggling, fighting to keep her identity against the hypnotic traps implanted in her own thoughts, and imagined her own role in stunning her, paralyzing her with the programmed words. She squirmed on the dildos.
A new display led her to prompt the reactivated slave, and she heard the tranquil voice declare: “I am export lot 459. I must obey.”
She instructed the slave and provided reinforcing praise. The systems reinforced Tara, with little tremors in the dildos, as they confirmed lot 459 was deeply obedient and locked into the program that would send her where the Owners willed her to be.
“Yes. I will obey . . .”
When she hung up, the screen swelled into the Spiral for an endless moment. Then Tara was staring blankly again, riding the dildos, alert for her cues and eager to obey. A set of pictures came up, another pretty woman and another bottomless need to take her mind for the Owners. Tara couldn’t hear herself moan.
Then she was standing, staring into another blank face and seeing the headset settling over it, shift change, and there was another tantalizing feel of flesh across hers as the new slave took her place. Tara felt herself start to revert to her base programming, to go to the sex training chamber now after her shift, but then she heard another trigger and froze. A voice filled her awareness and she followed it to another room.
She joined two other slaves lying on indoctrination chairs and relaxed as others fitted the restraints and attachments. Inwardly she tensed, aroused as she always was by knowing they were about to alter her mind again. The pulse through the chair opened her and relaxed her, and she lay passively, waiting for the
orgasm
Her cries were soft and modest, blending with the other two slaves’, and they lay mindlessly open as the Spiral loomed over them.
It worked inside her head. Tara’s head was a pussy that had been spread open and licked and stroked until it was sore, its sensitivity raised to a pitch that made her insane with need and avid for more use each time a thought was touched.
The Spiral was touching so many thoughts. Tara screamed noiselessly and submitted and tried to open herself further, to earn more, to obey.
Then she was blinking awake as the indoctrination slaves disconnected her and the others and they stood numbly by the chairs, getting used to the new instructions echoing in their heads.
They had been selected by the Owners to carry on the next phase of the calling program. Tara didn’t really remember much of the outside world, with all the purpose and life and sex and command she needed in the moist darkness of Here, but at her Owners’ command she conceived of difficulty, of conscious resistance to the program, even from slaves who should submit to reactivation and export.
The absurdity of disobedience didn’t trouble her. Nothing did. But she still felt odd. She and the others were to be more flexible now. They would be allowed autonomy when calling, to react more closely with the targets, who might try to evade or resist their triggers. Tara and the other slaves would need to become adaptive machines nimbler than the Owners’ computers, but still completely obedient.
Tara and the others traded glances, and deep within herself, Tara was surprised . . . it felt so odd to respond to another slave that way, outside of direct verbal command or sex.
They blinked together and marched to their assigned cubicles. The pace was picking up.
Now Tara started to feel what the machines were detecting. She was starting to taste the targets’ fear, as more of them seemed to be aware they were being found and reactivated. Overcoming resistance was no longer a fantasy—her thighs tightened as she thrust the trigger again into a struggling woman’s thoughts.
“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”
Tara listened to her struggle break up. “. . . hhhhh. Yes . . . not . . . thinking . . . but . . . please just let me put . . . two . . . thought . . . s . . .”
Tara swallowed. The desperation made her wet, but her conditioning kept her voice calm. “Hear only my voice now, Ms Lindstrom. You cannot hear or focus on anything else.”
“No! . . . you aren’t going to—going to—just hypnotize me like—” Tara found it harder, this time, to swallow. She stared more intently at the picture of export lot 473, who still thought her name was Gail Lindstrom.
“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?” She stared at the image of lot 473 gazing mindlessly at something behind that camera.
“. . . y-yes. Yes. Not thinking now. Not . . . thinking.”
“Are you still listening, Ms Lindstrom?” Tara had no idea why she was hoping so hard.
“I am . . . please . . . don’t . . . don’t . . .” Lot 473 was on the edge, tasting her own surrender. She could barely hold on.
Tara rocked herself on the dildos and pushed. “Octopus quintuplet, Ms Lindstrom.”
“Ohhhh. Yes. Yesss. Obey. Obeyyyy . . .”
It was almost better than her own orgasm. Tara shuddered and let the programming move her lips, her fingers. The pictures of export lot 473 blinked away and the Spiral returned.
Again and again.
Thinking, she knew, was so hard, but to obey the Owners she had to. Slowly, deliberately moving past the defenders, the readiness, watching for the soft openness . . .
Tara awakened to yet another pretty woman’s surprise as it blended to fear, and then something pulled at her. There was need, and Tara straddled the probes inside her and fucked herself furiously as the target’s breathing came faster and louder when she fought.
She didn’t climax when export lot 481 forgot that she wanted to be Angie Torrance and broke, but again knowing another slave had lost her will speared deep into her.
But then the slave asked quietly, “Why am I crying?”
Tara didn’t know why she felt she had to answer. Why she knew she couldn’ t. Why that hurt.
Why her eyes stung.
The machines knew, and a new screen flicker captured Tara’s gaze. When it had her, she convulsed on the dildos as OBEY OBEY OBEY hummed through the headset.
When she blinked awake she saw the screen was dark, but in the dimness she saw her own reflection—sweaty, blank-eyed, expressionless. Bodyfucked and mindfucked. Just seeing it and knowing that slave was herself almost set her off again.
Almost.
But better than coming was obeying.
She must obey.
Truth filled her ears and her mind. She must share it with lot 481.
“You are not crying, slave. You are happier than you have ever been.
“Your arousal deepens and intensifies with each obedient thought.”