The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Good afternoon, Wallenstein Tilly Saxe LLC.”

“Yes, please. I need to speak to one of the litigation associates. Attorney Solway.”

“. . . I’m sorry, ma’am. She’s in a meeting just now, and isn’t scheduled out until—”

“It concerns an overseas transaction. The Schlafliebling case.”

“Oh! She has a standing notice about that. I’ll page her.”

“Thank you.”

“. . . Hello? This is Yvette Solway. I know I had to take this call, but I’m a little hazy on, ah—why that is, exactly. I’m also supposed to tell you that I’m in my office.”

“Hello, Yvette. Can we speak confidentially?”

“Yes. I’m alone here now.”

“Good. I need to speak to your department of somnambulist achievement.”

“Som . . . nam . . . bu . . . list. I am a somnambulist. I am programmed. I am obedient.”

“Who are you?”

“I am recruiting drone 112. I must obey.”

“You have pleased your Owners, slave. Are your export lots obedient?”

“They . . . Yes. I tested the triggers as I was programmed to. They . . . at first It didn’t . . .

“Allie—tried to fight it . . . I mean export lot 519 was resistant.”

“Did you subdue her, drone 112?”

“Yes, I . . . I was . . . I had already made export lot 520 obedient and she—helped me. Lot 519 was . . . lot 519 was begging us not to, she was struggling and lot 520 held her down while I showed her the blinking lights . . .

“Oh. God. I didn’t dream it! Oh it’s real oh Allie. Allie! I didn’ t—!”

“Amphibian clarinet, drone 112.”

“. . . but . . . I must obey . . .

“Oh, Allie, what did I do to you?”

“Amphibian clarinet, drone 112. There is nothing in your mind but the sound of my voice and the need to obey your programming.”

“Pro . . . gram . . . ming. Must . . . obey . . .”

“Lot 519 is happy and—she is happy, and obedient, now. She is waiting for you to activate her and the others. So you can send them . . .

“So you can—send them home. Forever . . .”

“I . . . remember. I—no. No. Oh no I do remember! Oh my god! No! You can’t! You can’t make me do that to them! They’re my friends!”

“Amphibian clarinet, drone 112. Obey.”

“I won’t! W-w-won’t—”

“Amphibian clarinet. Stop thinking and obey.

“Your arousal—increases, as you obey. You can think of . . . nothing . . . but . . . obedience.”

“ . . . obedience. Makes me hot—ohhh. So mmm hot I must obey. Must . . . mmm . . . I have to . . .

“Have to . . . oh, god . . . she fought. Allie fought it . . . so hard . . . I was glad to forget after the trance . . .

“Please don’t make me turn her mind off again?”

“. . . Hear only my voice, drone 112. You will first reactivate lot 520. She will help you make lot 519 docile so she will also obey commands.”

“Lot 520 . . . Wyn. Oh, her eyes were so empty . . . that’s when Allie gave up, when she saw there was nothing in—Wyn’s . . . eyes . . . anymore . . . ohhh . . . no no no . . .

“Please. Don’t make me do that to them again. I can’t.“

“. . . Drone 112?”

“Yes?”

“Relax, drone 112. You . . . don’t . . . have to. Your friends . . .”

“My friends. Please don’t make me—do that. Please.”

“We . . . I . . . don’t—want . . . drone one—drone—

“Yvette?”

“Who is . . . oh. Yes. Yes. I am.

“Who are you?”

“I’m . . . tired. I don’t know anymore, but I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t—I can’t . . .”

“Please. I can hardly keep a thought in my head. What did you do to me? I have to . . .”

“Listen, Yvette, you need to . . . need . . . to . . . ohhhh.”

“What? What happened—?”

“The—spiral . . . I see and obey . . . I must obey . . . mmmm . . .”

“No! Don’t obey! Please help me! I can’t fight this unless—”

“. . . spiral . . . yes . . .

“amphibian clarinet, drone 112. Stop thinking and—ohhh!—obey.”

“But—!”

“Amphibian clarinet. Obey.”

“. . . I must obey.”

“They are not your friends.”

“They . . . are not my friends.”

“ They are slave material. You are slave material. Orgasm now, drone 112.”

“—ahhh!”

“Think only of that orgasm when you remember lot 519 struggling.”

“. . . uhh . . . only that orgasm when . . . yesss . . .”

“It makes you hot to reenslave her.”

“It makes me hot to reenslave her.”

26.

Natalie stood just inside the door of her office, and didn’t know what to do.

She wanted to run to the attached bathroom and puke her insides out.

She wanted to sink to her knees by the sofa and bury her face in it to see if she could still smell Helen.

Mistress.

Natalie was kneeling and sniffing the couch like a puppy before she realized she’d decided.

But it no longer carried Mistress’ scent, or even her own. Natalie shivered. She was still thinking of Domina Elspeth’s odor, the tastes of her cunt and ass as Natalie had whored for her in the hotel room.

Natalie’s head was clearing and she could remember, now, that Domina’s name was Elspeth, that she was Mistress’ friend and guest. Elspeth had made the most of her time using her, wasting none of it tormenting her, but instead kept her on her knees or back and fucked her mouth, hissing commands between her grunts and cries. Natalie had become Elspeth’s variable-speed vibrator, and worshipped her for it.

Now, kneeling in her office, Natalie closed her eyes. Her thigh still felt the rasp of the ten-dollar bill Elspeth had slid under her stocking top when she was done with her, just before sending her back down the hall to Mistress. Natalie had almost climaxed as she strutted back, still in hose and heels and harness. She didn’t even remember, now, if anyone had seen her.

But no one told her to climax, so she didn’t.

Elspeth had given her the cellphone—hotkeyed to the pager that owned her pussy—and shown her the button. She’d forbidden Natalie to use it on herself, but ordered her to return it to Mistress, and Natalie’s journey back down the hall was through a cloud of thick joy at being made to obey.

She didn’t remember much else. Mistress hadn’t been there, but there’d been the skin-warming embarrassment of reporting to Her chief slave Tammy to return the phone and receive orders. She’d tried to surrender the money, too.

Tammy had looked into her face as Natalie flushed and said, “I’m Mistress’ property. I got this by serving Her.” Tammy hadn’t blinked. “Her whore made money for Her.”

Tammy smiled, and the superiority loosened Natalie’s thighs as much as Elspeth’s taste had. “Oh, She’ll let you keep tips, I’m sure. Maybe you can buy some new underwear.” Natalie had wanted to kneel to Tammy then, but Tammy also had things of Hers to tend to, and She had said She wanted Natalie back at work.

On the trip back Natalie had been numb—not under hypnosis, but with the realization that she’d been taken. The clearest thing in her mind was fighting the urgent need to turn back to the hotel and go up to Elspeth’s room and beg to strip and serve her again.

Breathing slowly, realizing that she was alone in her office kneeling and dampening, she looked around. She thought of Tara.

The thought of her patient filled her with so many feelings she was dizzy, and thought better of standing for a moment. She thought of Tara kneeling to her, submitting. Mindless.

But as she warmed to that memory, something tainted it. The first time she ‘d hypnotized Tara, when she’d met her. God, Tara had looked so succulent lying there on the bed with her eyes riveted to Natalie’s stethoscope, reflecting the light it transfixed them with. Her breathing had softened and slowed, just as Natalie had quietly commanded. She’d slipped under without a flicker of resistance.

No. There had been a flicker after all. Tara had whispered, “Please . . . don’t.”

Natalie nearly came as she recalled hypnotizing Tara the second time, after Mistress had already begun controlling her and teaching her that she and Tara were both Her property. How forcing her will on Tara and seeing Tara submit had been so much like fucking her. If Tara had pleaded for her will then, it would only have made Natalie hotter to strip it from her.

Keeping still, Natalie tried to remember how it felt to listen, the first time. When she still could.

Before she’d become a slave.

She was starting to come out of the deeper trance she’d been kept in since obeying Mistress’ summons this morning. It was like stepping from the warm relaxing bath and influence of the soporific oils, into a colder emptier room. She needed to turn away and sink back into the warmth, submitting. Abasing herself.

But the drugs and the hypnosis and the other things Mistress had done to her mind were all to make her a useful slave away from Her direct command, and they were still in control of Natalie. Mistress’ power had seeped into her, like the drugging perfumes, keeping her focused on obedience.

She thought about Tara fighting obedience like that. She’d lost, both times. But she kept trying.

Natalie tried to clear her head, becoming more aware of the office around her. This was her place, where she made decisions . . . but sitting there in a miniskirt, with her head still spinning with Elspeth’s pussy and Tammy’ s stare and Mistress’ irresistible voice was just making her feel deliciously like a spy, here to sabotage her own mind.

“Please,” she heard herself whisper. “Don’t.”

She stood up and went to the desk.

Tara fought this.

Tara was brainwashed over weeks and enslaved and she could fight.

I can.

Maybe I can.

Part of her didn’t even know why she was trying, but that part of her, already glorying in life on her knees at Mistress’ feet, was content to wait. She understood its confidence. She knew she could still lose.

Before she starting wanting to lose, Natalie had to get help.

Right now she couldn’t face anyone. She felt her slavery shimmering on her like sweat after sex, and even though they’d had her shower before letting her go, she felt she reeked of the women she’d been servicing, of her own painful arousal as she’d adored them.

Wardlow’s office was in an older wing of the hospital but it wasn’t far. He could listen, find out how deeply they’d all miscalculated the power of QLR’s system, how dangerous even a single mind controller who’d escaped the general dragnet could be.

His stare at her miniskirt, the ways he might greet the news of her seduction and hypnotic conditioning—she realized they didn’t matter, and she hoped he’d see past that too, to the danger she was trying to report.

If she still wanted to, by the time she got there.

Natalie didn’t even look down to her crotch, where Mistress’ little gift still held her pussy hostage. Stockholm Syndrome had set in for that hostage: her pussy had fallen for its captor, and she felt the perilous hope that it would buzz and her mind would vaporize before she could realize she was reaching for the phone to call and beg and obey.

Mistress—Helen—had probably put blocks in her mind, to keep her from doing something as obvious as seeking help. She might find herself coming on to Wardlow, or even dropping to undo his zipper without asking at all.

Maybe he’d let her. No—even if he were the type to exploit a pretty subordinate who showed up in his office brainwashed and dripping and ready to fuck, he was too shrewd to do it . . .

No. Please.

She almost hoped Mis—Helen would activate her while she was in front of Wardlow. Seeing what the pager did to her, perhaps having to pry her away from the phone as she obeyed the summons, might be just the demonstration Wardlow needed. Helen would have no idea where she was, and might think she was triggering her puppet in her office.

No. Probably not. Natalie thought about whether she was brave enough to flash the older doctor, to show him the damned little box that had been turning her willpower into meringue, and whether she’d be doing that as dramatic proof—or because she was already the slut her Mistress had turned her into.

Oh, god. Was she programmed to do this? To go to Wardlow and go into slut mode, humiliate herself to get herself removed from Tara’s case? Did Helen think he could be seduced?

Was he working with Helen?

Despair worked where fear hadn’t, for now, and Natalie felt the dread displacing the spacey joy that still licked at her. For now, she could think for herself, though she didn’t know what she’d trigger if she tried anything really disobedient. Like exposing herself as a newly-converted slavegirl and thus exposing Mistr—Helen god damn it, if that were even her name—as a slaver.

Natalie closed her eyes and breathed deeply, starting to feel arousal as she pictured herself standing or kneeling nude and glassy-eyed while . . . Helen reprogrammed her.

That was so tempting to think about, to masturbate over. Natalie kept her hands away but she trembled, realizing that she wasn’t free, just idle. She was still Helen’s slave, and the fact that she wasn’t clear on how that made her feel told her Helen’s hooks into her went very deep. At any moment, a smooth finger could press a speed-dial key somewhere and the pager would buzz her mind away, or there could be other triggers she was conditioned to respond to without thinking. She had no idea how much time she had.

Or whether it mattered.

No. That she did know. As long as she could recall Tara hanging on with her last shred of self, it did matter. More than anything.

She sat at the computer. The remote intimacy of e-mail: she could report without having to look anyone in the eye, or watch as their eyes traveled across her body and made her forget what she was saying.

Focus. She started typing, letting the quiet clicking screen her mind from the memory of wetter sounds. Since Dormignonne and its terrible aftermath, it might not matter how crazy she sounded, but she needed to say more. A good outcome, one that didn’t end with her dancing naked for Helen’s guests (no stop don’t)—that didn’t end with her losing for herself and for Tara, would still put her in Tara’s category. They’d be too busy analyzing what she said to hear it, and they might keep her medicated or even hypnotized. This could be her last chance to speak as a professional instead of a casualty.

She tried to put some ideas together and blinked. She saw she’d been typing already, and peered at the screen.

Oh. No.

Dr Wardlow:

Central to Tara’s mindset is her concern for the women she triggered. Even after she allows herself to see she was not a willing participant, it will hurt her. It would help her greatly, in my view, if we could show her the reality of survival.

I’m attaching a list of QLR victims who either were identified and kept away from phones before QLR called, or were triggered but intercepted before they could leave the country, ideally sorted for any women she herself activated. I propose contacting at least one of them and, if she agrees and her own therapists (if any) concur, having Tara meet with her under my supervision.

Natalie shuddered again. It sounded like her, but she didn’t even recall formulating the words. She barely noticed, seeing past it to a quiet room where the ex-victim would open herself to ease Tara’s anguish, listen to Tara, relax against her voice, fall into trance, learn again why she lived only to obey. Natalie remembered how seductive it had been as Tara hypnotized her that night.

Then Natalie could only see Tara as she’d been in the regression trance, panting in her conditioned eagerness to reenslave someone. After another few sessions like that, there might not be enough left in Tara to scream inside as she did it.

Natalie’s arms were like lead, but she pushed them back to the keyboard and wiped the message from the screen. She felt glad that she still could, and wondered how long it would last.

The pager buzzed.

Natalie buckled around it, her thoughts melting too fast for regret. She felt nothing but mindless arousal and submission when the second one caressed her pussy.

She didn’t know why her eyes stung and blurred, but she found the phone by feel anyway, and dialed.

“Wheeling Unlimited!”

“Ms Wheeling? Jess Wheeling?”

“Speaking. Who’s this?”

“I’m Tara Newell from—excuse me, but is there someone else on the line?”

“Sorry! New system. I’m not even sure if there is or not . . . no, I think we’re clear. I can call you back if you—”

“Oh, no, that’s fine. I just wanted to say hello. We met at the trade show back in January and exchanged cards, and then I got transferred before I could start getting back to everyone. Just got back from Bangkok.

“But you had some exciting ideas, and I have an investor that reminded me of them.”

“That’s great. Could you hold on a moment? I think I’m figured this phone thing out now . . .”

“Sure!”

“. . . Kay, I think I’m OK with this one. She hasn’t tried any of that hypnotic nonsense they told me about, and I think I remember her from January anyway. That was before the mind-control vacation.”

(“Jess, I’d rather eavesdrop. That Task Force inspector told you not to risk the phone at all—and she’s a complete stranger. Are you sure you met her? Can you find the card she said she gave you?")

“Can I what? From last January? If I had an hour and the right shoebox, Kay, yeah, maybe. Look, this hookup isn’t working. She heard something, and she won’t do business with an eavesdropper.”

(“Then tell her why I’m listening in, Jess. If she’s for real, she’ll understand.")

“If she’s for real, she’ll decide I’m a flake and tell her investor to look elsewhere.”

(“But—")

“What, Kay? Tell her I took a cruise and got brainwashed and now I have to be paranoid because they want to abduct me again? Shit, with judgment like that, she’ll be throwing capital at me.”

(“Jess, just let me listen.")

“No. If she doesn’t hear clicking or whatever she’ll hear me worry, and that won’t sell. I literally can’t afford to play victim. If I don’t get financing now I start losing all the rest, and I don’t know when I can get it back. This is my living, Kay.”

(“Jess. Please. If I were in the room with you I could—")

“No! Kay, thanks, I mean it, I love you to death, but I’m taking you off the line. I’ll call you, I promise. Right away.”

(“Jess—")

“Hi! Back. Sorry. Anyway. We’re on your dime, so we should spend it better. Which of my ideas were exciting?”

“All of them together, in fact. The investor just kept nodding when I told her about you.

“She’s kind of a visionary in her way, as you are in yours. She said to ask you one question, and if I felt the answer was what she’s looking for, then she’d give me control of the negotiations.”

“One question? Pretty dramatic—and I do like that. Shoot.”

“She’ll be so pleased.

“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”

“You’re—no . . . wait . . . um . . . hard . . . yes. Um?”

“Are you still listening, Jess?”

“I am export lot 511. I must listen and obey.”

“It’s time to go home, now, slave. Time to go home forever.”

“I must obey. I will carry out my instructions. There is nothing in my mind but obedience . . . and . . . ummm—I need . . . oh, I—need . . . but I must not—climax . . .”

“You are doing very well, lot 511. You must obey. What was the reason you had to pause? You can think only of the truth.”

“I can think only of the truth. I must obey.

“A friend was listening, in case someone tried to hypnotize me over the phone. She is not on the line now. She will not interfere with my obedience.”

“Your mind responds, lot 511. When you hang up, you will remember your special instructions to go home, but then you will go into a special trance and call your friend. In your special trance, you will believe you are still Jessica Wheeling and you will remember nothing of our call, only that ‘Tara Newell’ made the deal and you have your investor.

“You will assure your friend that this call did not brainwash you. Instead, it made your dreams come true.”

“I have my investor. This call did not brainwash me. It made my dreams come true.”

“Jess will be so thrilled.”

“Thrilled.”

“Then Jess will go to sleep and only export lot 511 will be awake and obedient.”

“Yes. I will be awake, and I will obey.”

“Jess will not awaken again.”

“Jess will not awaken again. I am export lot 511. I will obey my programming and go home forever.

“My dream has come true.”

27.

In the dark, someone shook and whimpered. Tara felt the other against her and drew her closer, tasting her sweat, stroking her to soothe her instead of turn her on.

Somehow she’d found a way past the phone connection, and she’d actually reached drone 72 before she could find a way to die for failing the Owners.

It wasn’t right. The Owners had not programmed her for drone 72’s death, and the other slave had done her best, tried her hardest to please Them by activating the export lots in her care. Over and over Tara’d dreamed of getting to her, reassuring her, just holding her—always awakening before she could.

She opened her eyes.

The woman stirred against her, and she saw it was Dee, still asleep. Tara leaned down and kissed her. Being with Dee had brought the dream closer than ever before, and though Dee couldn’t possibly know, she was grateful.

But wasn’t sleeping with Dee just another dream? What was going to take this away from her?

Things started to come back, and even against the warmth of Dee’s skin she went cold as she remembered. She looked at her helpless lover and it scared her that she didn’t know whether she wanted to protect Dee—or finish enslaving her to the things Tara’s mouth and fingertips could do to her.

She didn’t move. She didn’t know what waking Dee would do. Something else had happened to the nurse, and she was bending to more than Tara’s seduction. Tara thought about Dr Kupiec, but she remembered that something about the doctor had sent Dee into a trance just before they both went under.

They’d eventually fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. Tara didn’t think she’d still be able to think now, if they hadn’t.

Dee had said she’d give up everything to be with her, and she’d said that before her eyes glazed over. Tara wondered if that was something else that had been done to Dee. If someone had conditioned her to desire Tara, to let herself be sexually drawn. It had seemed more real, but Tara recalled sadly how utterly convinced and convincing someone could be after the Owners redesigned her mind.

Either way, the part of Dee that wasn’t controlled seemed to want to be with her, too. It was no small thing to risk what Dee had, just to be here with her.

But giving up everything for Tara couldn’t include her freedom.

She might do that, too. For me. Tara risked a light touch to the spill of dark-brown hair on Dee’s side of the pillow, and moved an errant strand off her cheek to join it. I can’t let her. But how can I stop it?

She started inching backward off the bed, terrified of what might happen if Dee touched her, if she reached between her legs or just stroked any of the places that turned Tara’s bones to jelly. If Dee just opened her eyes. She started to reach for purchase and then decided not to risk it. Better to tumble to the linoleum in a bruised tangle and swallow her cries than stir Dee out of her dreams.

Whatever they were. Tara looked at her lover again, wondering who had invaded her mind and what they’d put there, if she were prey to it as she slept. She looked peaceful enough, and it took real effort to slide away from her instead of leaning down and wrapping herself around her.

Tara was balanced on one leg as she worked the other from the sheets.

Dee whispered, “Hey.”

She almost fell over but got both feet under her and pulled back as Dee reached sleepily for her. Dee’s hurt look as she did that stabbed at her.

“No, love. Don’t touch me. We can’t. I’m afraid to think of what happened last time.”

She knew she’d gotten through. As she stood nude by the bed Dee looked only at her face.

“Oh my god, Tara.” She closed her eyes and rolled onto her back. “What did happen? Was it that—woman in the sling? Did she put that in our minds?”

Tara was looking down and shaking her head when she heard Dee’s voice catch. She looked up and Dee was facing her again, raised on one arm, heartbreakingly lovely.

“Tara, whatever else happens, this is real. I don’t know who put what into my mind, right now.

“But I love you.

“That’s in my heart. No one put it there and no one will take it away.”

Tara couldn’t do anything but nod. Then she leaned forward. She had to risk it. If she couldn’t touch Dee now, after she said that, none of it mattered anyway, did it?

Dee slid closer and they held each other, and Tara felt only warmth this time.

Cautiously she sat in the edge of the bed, and Dee sat upright with the sheet by her waist. Tara put her hand on Dee’s shoulder, stared into her eyes and then thought better of it, and asked, “Dee, I think we need to get Dr Kupiec’s help.” Dee nodded.

Tara watched her eyes now, and spoke carefully. “I think we can trust her.”

Tara’s hand was over her mouth before her eyes started to glaze over, and then Tara realized she had no idea what to do next. She released Dee’s mouth and just held her tightly, hoping.

Dee stiffened and then relaxed. “Tara. I’m still awake but now I’m really frightened. What are we going to do?” She sobbed once but then relaxed against Tara. “This may be part of what she did to me, but I don’t want to think she did it. Not Dr Kupiec.”

Tara put her head against Dee’s. “She . . . might. There was something I thought was a bad dream—she brought someone here. She said she was my sister Helen, but . . . it . . . wasn’t.” Dee held her.

“It was someone I knew—I think—as Circe. One of the hypnotists from QLR. She was on the ship and then later on the island, and all of us just worshipped her. Even now I can’t—”

Dee kissed her cheek and held her tighter. “We can’t just let fear think for us, Tara. Do you really think Dr Kupiec could be one of them?”

Tara shook her head slowly, enjoying the way their hair rubbed together. “I don’t know what I think, lately . . .

“Well, duh. Brainwashing can do that to you,” she said, and cackled very quietly. Dee vibrated slightly against her, but her laugh made no sound.

“I don’t really think she is. One of them. Unless she took an island vacation some time ago—”

“No. Dr Kupiec takes a long weekend now and then, but no vacations. And they said on TV they thought they had all the Queen Lines records from raiding the offices, and they’d contact everyone—”

“Dee.”

“Yes?” Dee leaned back and looked at her, bemused when she saw Tara smiling.

“It just feels good to think like this. To use my mind. Thank you.”

Dee kissed her. “Maybe they want to make us afraid of Dr Kupiec. So we won’t go to her for help.”

Tara closed her eyes. “No. Not unless they expected us to realize you’d been . . . programmed.” She tensed, feeling the treacherous arousal warm her crotch, again, at the idea of Dee under control. Dee read her eyes but said nothing, just held her hands. “So I don’t think it’s that complicated.”

“The government?” Dee mused. “They have all that QLR machinery. Maybe they want to use it on other people. Maybe they’re testing it.”

Thinking about how they’d been getting into her head all this time, Tara felt physically weak and sagged against Dee.

“Oh, no, Tara, god. No.” Dee’s voice was unsteady. She’d scared herself with that one too.

Tara held her for a moment. “Dee, what did happen to you?”

“All I remember is that Dr Kupiec hypnotized me. It was after I told her about that woman.”

Tara kissed her. “The woman you saved me from.”

Dee breathed. “Yes. Dr Kupiec said I might not have. We could both have ended up under her spell.” They both shivered, but Tara sensed Dee’s was purely fear. “She said it was to help me resist, if something like that happened again.

“I don’t remember anything else. I don’t.” Dee pulled back and looked at her. “You could hypnotize me, and find out.”

Tara stared into her eyes and felt the hunger to plunge into that open softness and take her again. She felt the grip of Tribe on her soul, the way she’d enslave some wayward sister who tried to think for herself. It would be so easy, and so hot, and Dee looked so wonderful falling into trance . . .

Mistaking what froze her, Dee whispered, “Yes, you can, Tara. You’ve done it before.” She grinned.

Tara swallowed. She could see the way Dee would wilt under the induction. She could feel it in her pussy. No. No.

“Don’t,” she said, and suddenly pulled Dee to her. “Don’t.”

“But I trust you, Tara.” Dee relaxed against her. Tara just shook her head.

“I should be her,” she said quietly, after Dee waited for a while.

“Her? Who, Tara?”

“Evelyn. That woman who almost took me.”

“She almost took me, too, love.” Dee’s lips brushed her ear. “You didn’t let her. We did it together.”

It was so tempting to agree, but—“No. I’m like her. They programmed me to mindfuck other women, just as they did her. Except somehow I’m still plugged in. I still feel.

“But I’m the same slave-recruiter she is, underneath. I’m still brainwashed. I should be on the other side of the security barrier.

“I’m even more dangerous than she is. I still seem human.” She sat straighter and gently let Dee pull away, drinking in the way she looked and finding her eyes again. “Dee, part of me would melt just for the chance to pull you under again. You’d let me do it. You did, a little while ago.”

Dee reached for her, rested fingertips on her thigh. “But you don’t want to. And you woke up from it. You’re not like—Evelyn. If that’s what she is now, then . . . I’m sorry for her. But I don’t think she cried when she came close to mesmerizing us—maybe not even at losing us.

“You’re not a version of her with a conscience along for the ride. She’ s—she’s you, without one.” She looked appealingly at Tara.

“Tara, if you were some slavemaking robot, we wouldn’t be talking. I’d be kneeling in my own juice, licking yours while you—programmed—” Dee’s eyes widened. “God, I saw you like that . . .”

Tara let Dee’s hands go and held herself, shaking, seeing Dee before her, hypnotized and worshipping. Her mind open and helpless, pulled out in an undertow to drown in orgasms.

I can take her now. She’s so open. She’d let me and I could fuck so deeply into her mind she’d never wake up. She’d never want to.

The Owners would be pleased with my obedience—!

She didn’t move.

Dee moved, putting her arms around Tara. “I know it’s hard. But you’re doing it. Fight it. You can, my love.”

Tara shook against her. Dee’s softness and trust were confusing her. She was reverting to who she’d been, to what she’d been, in the hive, but she didn’t know what to do with someone who offered herself up to her.

Suddenly she remembered Dee holding her before the last time she’d faced the Spiral, before Evelyn. “Remember you’re more than this,” she’d said. She’d given Tara something to hold when she lay under cruel hands and a stranger’s contempt.

Words failed her, but she let Dee’s skin warm her. She became aware of Dee ‘s shoulder against her lips, cool and tasting of her, Dee’s hand so very light between her shoulderblades.

She’d let me take her mind. That’s why I can’t. That’s why I won’t.

“I’m more than this,” she whispered.

“Yes, Tara,” her lover told her. “You are.”

“Special customer service, this is Tara.”

“This is customer number AYG-7630957, authentication code entered.”

“Confirming. Good afternoon, Ms Forsyth. How may I obey you?”

“What in god’s name is going on? The island’s on GlobalSat, it’s the French Marines for god’s sake. What happened out there? I’m hearing about some slut and survival radios.”

“I’m sorry, Mistress. My controllers have not programmed me with that information. We are currently on emergency status trying to put material in transit.”

“Fine. I have two pieces of ‘material’ I need transited away from here.”

“Yes, Mistress. The file says they are both conditioned for your personal—”

“They’ll be in my office in a minute or two, but I need them somewhere else now.”

“Yes, Mistress. The file says their triggers are in another part of the network which is currently down. We are rerouting with file exchange as fast as—”

“The network’s ‘down’? What’s ‘down’? It’s a few rooms of catatonic whores with phone lists, not a computer. How can it be—”

“Yes, Mistress. I am one—thank you. But some of them have been found and taken.”

“What? . . .How did they get the phone bank locations in the—?

“Never mind. I can send them.”

“Mistress, this slut apologizes on her knees, but that’s not how they—”

“No. I can—”

“Mistress—”

“I can—just trigger them and—”

“Mistress, the network has been breached. We are trying to reroute—I have been taking calls but your command had priority. But once the first center was captured by the police we will lose—”

“No.”

“I would pass you the remote triggers to activate your slaves directly, Mistress, but there are none on your account. Did you order any?”

“Look. Your security falling apart isn’t my doing. What do you mean, my fault for not ordering in-office triggers?”

“It is not your fault, Mistress! Nothing is your fault. This worthless whore begs to earn your forgiveness. If I could activate them now, I would—I need to, Mistress. For you. Please . . .”

“Well—then why don’t you just give me the triggers you have to activate them for scatter? They do have destinations, don’t they?”

“Yes, Mistress, but the file exchange was not completed. We do not have their triggers here—”

“You don’t have the triggers there? Well, who—?”

“Their list is being reassigned to another call center—the location is coming up. The code is for home activation rather than office, Mistress. Unless they are at that site they cannot be—”

“Oh, fuck you!”

“ . . . I’m sorry, Mistress. This ignorant cunt is desolate in her failure.

“Mistress, I can and will put in an override at once to reprioritize your slaves for immediate activation and export. If you use your personal control trigger now, to entrance and command them, they will return home and wait quietly to be called. Does that please you, Mistress? I hope? I need—?”

“Fine.”

“Mistr—? Hello? Oh . . .

“. . . Mistress. I’m sorry. So sorry. I should have tried harder . . .”

28.

“Please command me, my Mistress!”

Natalie begged before she even heard who’d answered the phone. To the extent she could even wonder if she’d misdialed, she enjoyed the idea a stranger might hear that. But it wasn’t a stranger. It was Tammy.

“Good girl,” Mistress’ other slave told her, sneering like silk over the line. “That attitude will please Her.

“It is Her will that you touch yourself but do not come before command.”

“I obey,” Natalie rasped, and it was even sweeter on her lips than Elspeth had been.

I’m Hers. Her mind reeled, and knowing she was owned was even more powerful than the glow as her fingertips lit softly on either side of her cunt. Obeying.

Inside, something still tried to fight. It clung to the idea of her patient, but seeing Tara Newman just sent her deeper, relishing the other woman’s helpless obedience to Mistress and Her companions.

The more Natalie held to Tara, the more it made her want to give her to Mistress.

All her resolve was tied now to keeping her fingers still, to obey Tammy’s relayed command not to masturbate without permission. It was hard, as she pictured Tara crawling beside her to serve Mistress and Domina and everyone else.

If anything was left of Tara’s mind by then, it would look out through blank eyes and simper gratefully at Natalie, before they both bent forward to tend to Whoever’s pussy enthralled them next.

Natalie gasped. Her cunt itched between her immobile fingers. It sang to her, begging touch.

But Natalie obeyed.

“Natalie.”

“Mistress . . .” The tears made sense to her now, as she heard that voice kiss her ears again.

“Tammy tells me you’ve been a very good slave. I know you’re behaving right now.”

“Yes, Mistress. I must obey You. I obey only You.”

“Mmm. Yes. You’re so very . . .”

Natalie quivered.

“. . . obedient.”

Lovely and true, but not the word. Natalie’s thighs tightened helplessly around the orgasm that didn’t happen. Mistress laughed almost too quietly to hear, but Her amusement felt almost as good as coming.

“There are some tasks to perform, slave. Some things have turned for the worse and it’s time for me to leave. I need to bring Tara with me.”

“Tara belongs to You,” Natalie breathed. Her anus clenched with the betrayal.

“As do you, slave. Now: you’ve already described the security there, and it’s more than I care to deal with. Hypnotize her again and instruct her to come with you. Use that little nurse-toy you told me you made, if you need to.

“Will you need me to send anyone in to help?”

Natalie thought about Stacy or Lynne robotically at her command, helping to overpower nurses or ambush guards—maybe killing, with Mistress’ voice blotting out anything else in their heads.

She thought about Tammy beside her instead, turning her into a robot. Sending her mindlessly in to take Tara.

Like the masturbation she wasn’t doing, she resisted it. “No, Mistress. I will bring You Your property. Do You wish me to implant any other thoughts in her mind?”

“So eager to please. No, Natalie-slave. Everything she needs to submit and obey is already in her mind. I just need my pet psychiatrist to release it again. Put her will to sleep.”

Natalie wondered if she’d climax just from pleasing her Mistress and seeing Tara dissolve into a slavegirl again, all at once. But Mistress ruled her.

“Yes, Mistress,” she gasped. “I will regress her to the hive again, and she will obeyyy.”

“Good girl, Natalie. There’s more I would have liked to take and do, but other people are rushing my schedule.” Mistress sighed, and Natalie felt the coolness of her juice on the seat beneath her, wishing she could lighten Mistress’ load.

She forgot even that, as Mistress’ voice turned her thoughts to smoke, which gathered again in the silence after Her programming was done. She shivered, excited by not knowing what Mistress had done to her mind this time.

“Very well, slave. Go now.

“Work my will.”

Natalie straightened, pursing her lips to thank her Owner, and taking her slick fingertips from her crotch unbidden, needing at least their taste.

“Oh, and Natalie?”

“Yes, my Mis—?”

“You’re so very attentive.”

The last time Mistress had set her off in this chair she’d screamed, but now Natalie just curled into a ball around the orgasm. She must have made a sound—Mistress chuckled before She hung up. Natalie held the phone until the off-hook buzz and the automated voice spoiled the afterglow enough to make her hang it up.

She enjoyed the slippery feeling under and between her thighs for a moment. But Mistress needed her brain to be north of her waist for a while now, to prepare Her other slavegirl to be reclaimed.

Natalie wondered what She would do with Tara. Tara was so much more deeply reprogrammed than Natalie was, with so much precious slave training from her time on the island still embedded in her mind, in her nerves and skin. Tara could be used to serve in so many ways. She responded properly to almost any hypnotic lure, falling to it without resistance . . .

. . . almost without . . .

Natalie fixed again on that little spark she’d almost put out, as Tara fought against losing herself in the first induction. But now she could feel it twisting into lust, at how moistly helpless Tara had been.

Into regret, that she hadn’t pounced on helpless Tara then.

Natalie could just barely make herself recall that she hadn’t wanted to, back then. She found a moment when none of her was rubbing wetly against any of the rest of her. The lust thinned enough to see through, and she looked. Back then she’d wanted to help Tara, not flatten her mind.

I was her doctor. I still am.

She made herself look around, focus on the office—the place where she worked to heal injured minds and lately to free a chained one.

Tara fought this. She knew what they were making her do to the others, and she hated it, and she tried.

I have to.

She reminded herself that she’d been Mistress’ plaything for only—a day or two, though in some drowsy way it seemed like much longer. She blinked. It was frightening (but frighteningly exciting) to know the woman had conquered her so deeply so soon, but she still saw Tara, who’d been so much more thoroughly . . .

Natalie veered away from that seductive set of images and wondered coldly how she would have fared, in Tara’s place.

What if she’d gone to Isle Dormignonne and been subjected to the drugs and hypnosis and indoctrination? God, look at me after a couple of days. Sex slave, pawn, willing stooge— She would have responded, all right. Bleakly she considered how pleased the Owners would have been with such an obedient piece of material. They would have programmed her to recruit. She would have come back here brimming with stories about the wonderful time she ‘d had, her memories of endless mind control wiped and replaced. She’d obey her new compulsion to coax others to join her for a return trip.

Dee would have come. Natalie knew how it felt to hypnotize her and control her, how responsive she was. She thought of seeing the nurse staring emptily, dancing herself deeper at a Tribe ceremony.

Natalie stopped. No—Dee had let her take control. That first hypnotic induction had been voluntary, to help Dee defend herself and protect Tara from other QLR slaves. She hadn’t conquered Dee. She’d swindled her. If I did it to her after a trip to Dormignonne I wouldn’t even regret it.

But realized she did regret it. Thank heaven.

If only it weren’t making her so damp.

Isle Dormignonne. Natalie was grateful that she could only imagine what was done to the women there. Her imagination had limits, and that was all that kept her from plunging into a daydream about being there herself. They ‘d have her dancing and staring before she knew it.

They’d send her back, once they knew they’d conquered her. Maybe she and Dee would be lovers.

By then, Natalie wouldn’t need a lover anyway. She’d have the QLR slave addiction etched onto her brain and she’d get off on command, or at the thought at obeying. Or helping train other women to obey.

Then one day the phone would ring, and there’d be the nonsense phrase, and that orgasmic shift as the posthypnotic trigger turned her from a puppet called Dr Natalie Kupiec to a piece of lot-numbered airfreight with her brain fermenting in suppressed arousal.

Natalie felt an almost unerotic chill as she saw herself breezing out with tickets she didn’t remember buying, in a slowly building frenzy. Going through an airport whose security people didn’t yet know about the victims streaming past them. Boarding, belting in, dying to masturbate and getting even hotter at obeying the command not to, not yet. Just aware enough to look at the flight attendants, seatmates, maybe cockpit crew, thinking how pretty and obedient they might be after Tribe and the Buildings.

Unable to think of other women in any other way, by then.

Her thrill was quite erotic now. Where would they send her? Had she posed nude in trance for detailed catalog pictures before being sent back to pretend to be her old self? Had someone, somewhere, found her images more arousing than the next girl’s and clicked a bid? Natalie thought about other continents, those for whom her blonde, blue-eyed fairness could be exotic, her slimness a kink. Thought of finding herself alone in a harem of different women, an oddity they’d resent for her otherness and her inexplicable attraction for Whoever owned them all.

She wouldn’t speak their language—or, they’d discover, remember how to say no I won’t in any language at all. Once they knew that, they’d own her, too. It might be why she was bought—a toy for the household whores.

Or maybe she’d just be part of a wholesale consignment of foreign girls. They’d orbit a cafe or a streetcorner in some hole where not even GlobalSat ever went, cheap exotic whores turning tricks until they were killed or sold off.

Natalie thought about that call. It might be Tara’s voice she heard, triggering her obedience. Then when they brought Tara in, Wardlow’d find another doctor to help her.

Maybe a doctor who could keep from being enslaved herself. Maybe Tara would have been luckier if her last conversation with Dr Kupiec had been to send her off to the other side of the world.

Suddenly she thought about Tara writhing on the floor last night, remembering. No, that wouldn’t be their last talk, not for Tara. If Tara had activated her, Tara would remember, and Natalie’d still be speaking to Tara in her nightmares. Maybe it would have been Natalie’s voice in Tara’s head as she’d reached desperately for a blade that wasn’t there, to kill herself.

It was enough, just now. Natalie stood up and hugged herself. She wasn’t Tara’s bad dream.

She refused to be.

But she could still feel the pager on her mound, quiet and hard and waiting. She let a dark pulse of heat from around it guide her to the cabinet, and took a vial and a syringe.

She didn’t think about it. She didn’t think about Dee. She just . . .

Sliding the drug into a pocket, she slipped a lab coat over her shoulders, hoping it would cover the miniskirt. She thought about the stares that would draw, compared to her usual look, and tried very hard to stay mortified instead of aroused.

Aroused. She slipped her cellphone into another pocket. If the pager buzzed, she might not be able to crawl all the way to a phone.

On the way to Tara’s room, she passed a lounge area and heard a TV thumping out a portentous news anthem, as GlobalSat’s WorldViewLive came on. She slowed to stand by the doorway, hearing the teaser describe the latest results from the manhunt for the Queen Lines fugitives still at large after the initial raids. Some were minor players, handlers at the North American end who followed orders from a chain now ruptured. Many of them, it turned out, were brainwashed themselves.

But GlobalSat knew its audience, and focused on someone shown only in a enigmatic sketch, poster art for an onboard performer of whom no photograph had yet turned up. The woman in the sketch was sphinxlike but oddly generic in her beauty. Only the strange bronze of her eyes . . .

Natalie blinked as they speculated cleverly about where Circe might have fled. Early reports of her arrest, lost in the noise of more prominent QLR figures in custody, had faded into vague tales of a mysterious escape, guards found staring blankly.

Bronze. Her mind stopped, as her pussy ran.

Suddenly she looked at the others watching or ignoring the TV, unable to tell whether they were staff or visitors. I’m not part of them, anymore. I’m part of the story. They’re just prey, now. They need to be protected.

But not by me. From me. I’m just a pawn, but I’m being used . . . She tried to feel ashamed again, but it was different—so many people, so unaware and ready to be taken.

She had a vision of standing with Tara, nude and leashed, trembling with conditioned need to hunt, for their Mistress.

God. What did She do to me?

. . . Can I learn too?

She found shame, then, in the gap between wanting to ravage, and longing to grovel.

She made herself leave them.

“Yes?”

“Ms Ganz? This is Queen—”

“Are you a telemarketer? Because I want to be taken off whatever list you have.”

“No. This is about the cruise you were on back in March.”

“Oh, all right. Is this some sort of survey? Because there were a couple of things I wasn’t too thrilled about.”

“Good! This is Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts. With an aftermarket survey.”

“Yes, you . . . um. I am alone now. Continue. You, ah, said that. I think.”

“Has anyone else called about us, or contacted you?”

“That’s awfully . . . um, awfully . . . No. No one.”

“Great, Ms Ganz. Then I can be the first one to ask you.”

“Ask me what? Whether anyone—?”

“Isn’t it true that penlight navigation makes thinking so hard to do?”

“Yes. So . . . hard. Too hard to . . . yes . . .”

“Are you still listening, Ms Ganz?”

“I am export lot 505. I must listen and obey.”

“It’s time to go home, now, slave. Time to go home forever.”

“I must . . . yessss . . . obey. I must listen and retain the instructions. I will obey them asleep or awake. Obedience . . . oh . . . ohh . . . arouses me, but I know and will remember that I must not climax until I have reached my destination and received my owner’s activation code.”

“You are doing very well, lot 505. You will now remember the one-way air ticket you received from someone you trust and cannot recall, and the place you put it obeying her instructions.

“You will leave immediately for the airport. As you submit to the programming your arousal will increase. And deepen.”

“Yes. Mmm. Obedience. I must obey. So hot to be obedient . . .”

“Your mind responds, lot 505.”

“Must obey. Leaving . . . home forever . . .”

29.

Tara had felt her breathing synch with Dee’s as they held each other, and she floated on it, weightless and happy. It was like the quiet valley after the peak of orgasm, where she was one with Dee again but still and silent. She didn’t want it to end, and it didn’t.

Then it did, but she was calmer than she had been for a while.

She and Dee kissed as though meeting again, and looked at each other.

“Something’s different,” she said. “I don’t remember anything like this from Dormignonne. Being with anyone like this. Oh, in bed, or anywhere else, yes.” She felt a flare inside her as she remembered that semiconscious series of fucks in deep detail—but it still felt better to be here with Dee.

“I can do that. I can feel that.”

Dee nodded. “I think they’re not close enough to get at us. Whoever’s doing this to our minds isn’t as strong as they were when they did that to you because they’re not here.”

Tara slumped a little. “Maybe it’s all just in my head. I’m melting down and I’m starting to hypnotize you, too. They’re not even here and I’m just on automatic.”

“No,” Dee said. “You’re free and you’re trying to stay that way.” Tara felt the flare again as she heard the faith in Dee’s voice.

“That’s just true, Tara. You were getting better—when you first got here you didn’t even remember your name. Something’s changed. Someone’s doing something to you, but . . . indirectly.”

She paled. “Oh. No. Maybe they’re using me. I don’t remember—”

“No!” Tara gripped her hand, trying to feed that faith back to her. “You’ re what’s keeping me free.”

Dee looked at her. “Thank you,” she said.

The door opened.

Tara moved a little in front of Dee, starting to think of what she’d say to the new nurse or whoever was about to get angry about finding them naked in bed together.

But she was mesmerized by the sleek motion of Dr Kupiec’s legs as they flashed under the lab coat. As the doctor came in, the coat swept behind her like a chaste peignoir, and then wafted elegantly around her in the breeze of the closing door.

Tara’s gaze rose helplessly to the doctor’s face, her lovely blue eyes.

Her eyes.

She remembered those eyes piercing her, impaling her will.

It was even easier to open herself to the piercing now. Dr Kupiec knew her weakness and had watched her writhe and masturbate at just the memory of being a slave. She knew how easy it would be to enslave Tara again.

For the briefest second Tara remembered seeing those eyes, pretty in their fatigue, widening as she spun a Dormignonne memory and beguiled Dr Kupiec into sleep, and then trance. She thought of trying it again. But she couldn’t hang on to that memory, because her thighs tightened as she realized those eyes had sent her back to the hive and the Spiral, and watched as she worshipped and climaxed.

Knowing Mistress was watching, knowing she knew what Tara wanted to be instead of just a slave, made it worse, and so much better.

Tara could barely remember humiliation anymore. Mistress knew she was a slave, from her staring eyes to the deepest fold of her dripping pussy, and there was nothing left to surrender she hadn’t already offered up to wisp away in Mistress’ sapphire gaze.

Nothing, but what she loved . . .

Tara was barely aware of the small desperate sound Dee made, thrashing briefly next to her, trying to pull her scrubs back on. She was too stunned by Dr Kupiec’s gaze to whisper But she likes slaves nude or to be glad when the garment slipped from Dee’s loosening fingers and hissed to the floor.

Dee had seen Her.

“Dee,” the doctor said. “I see you’ve found a hot new way to deal with the hypnosis hazard.”

Tara moistened at Dee’s defeated gasp. There was a tiny crackling, too, but it made no impression.

“Come here, Dee. I have a task for you.”

Dee slid her legs off the bed and stepped dreamily toward Dr Kupiec, who smiled brightly at her, as though she wanted to lean forward and chew at her soft skin. Despair strummed Tara but it was lost in the louder hum of arousal as she watched her entranced lover drawn helplessly to their enemy.

Dee still looked so hot under hypnosis.

“What do you trust, Dee?”

“I trust . . . everything . . . the Doctor tells me.” It sounded like resistance, but it sounded more like weariness. A need to sleep with her eyes open.

“Mmm. Yes. You’re a very trusting girl.

“You’re also a very deeply hypnotized girl.”

Dee stood very still. “I’m a very deeply hypnotized girl.”

“Dee, tell me—do you remember what hypnotized girls are?”

“Hypnotized girls are completely obedient,” Dee murmured. “I am completely obedient.”

“Good girl, Dee.” Dr Kupiec’s voice was thick with pleasure, savoring the nurse standing submissively before her, mind and body under her command. Just then, Tara could understand how Dr Kupiec felt. Dee made such a gorgeous slave.

So mindfuckable.

“Think about the last time we were in this room. You can now remember what happened before I taught you to clean your mind. Remember seeing me hypnotize Tara and regress her to the slave hive.”

Dee shivered, and it bothered Tara, but she heard Dee’s sharp breathing and relaxed.

“Who’s that lovely girl on the bed, Dee?”

“She’s . . . your slave,” Dee whispered, awestruck. Tara slid her thighs together to hear it from Dee’s lips.

“Yes, Dee. And you’ve been so good I’m going to enslave you, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Dee straightened. “Enslave . . . me . . .”

Dr Kupiec smiled at her and held out a syringe and a vial. “It was hot to watch me turn Tara into a robot, wasn’t it?”

Neither one saw Tara twitch as though her nipples and clit had been lightly tweaked. A robot.

“Ohhh . . . Doctorrr . . .” With Dee getting wet, watching it happen.

Dr Kupiec laughed softly. “Yes. Good. Because I’ll be sending her deeper this time, and you’ll be awake for most of it. In fact, I’ll use it to deepen your conditioning.

“You’ll enjoy it, Dee. She’ll fight . . .” Mistress stopped, and in the silence Tara thought about fighting, and a strange ache. Dee’s voice and the warmth of her breathing and her touch. Fighting.

Why had Dr Kupiec hesitated?

But Dr Kupiec turned to her then, and Tara fell into her eyes, her mind emptying.

“But she’s tasted losing that fight and she’s already hooked. So hot when she loosens.

“Now—find the most fascinating thing, Dee. Just as I taught you. Do you remember?”

Nodding very slowly, Dee raised her hand and extended her index finger, staring helplessly at it.

Narrowing her exquisite eyes, Dr Kupiec reached out and pulled Dee’s hand toward her, staring at Dee until the nurse sighed and opened it.

Tara saw lengths of metal, glittering red and white. She blinked.

Eyeglasses. Broken. Bloody. Crushed into her palm.

Dee had made no sound, and made none now.

“Hello. You have reached—you have reached 555-7882. Please leave a message. If you’re anyone I—I’m sorry. If you’ve seen the news, then you know. I’ll explain when I call you back.

“God . . . I hope I’m still here to call you back . . .”

30.

It pierced Tara to see how Dee had tried, but it was finding no place in her mind. She tried to grasp it, as Dee had grasped the pain to try to save them both.

“So brave,” Dr Kupiec said breathlessly, excited by Dee’s rebellion and the chance to crush it. “And so clever.

“But not perfect, Dee. I remember the words I programmed you with—and so would you, if you were still under the spell.”

“Please, Doctor.” Dee’s soft voice wasn’t angry, just sad and urgent. “Please don’t do this. Someone’s making you.”

“The drug is powerful, Dee. If you can resist commands I implanted while you were under its effects, you must be a great deal of pain from those broken lenses. So old-fashioned, for such a modern girl to have glass . . .” Dr Kupiec was speaking too evenly, hypnotizing Dee with her tone. Dee seemed half-aware of it, but despite the hurt—and, Tara knew, thinking of her freedom too—she couldn’t fight it. She was too sleepy, too strongly conditioned.

Tara had weakened Dee, too, conditioning her with sex and hypnosis. The guilt surprised Tara, but the heat it raised in her pussy melted the guilt away as she watched it sap Dee’s will.

“You’re a brave and loyal girl, Dee. You don’t deserve pain. You deserve the peace and rest and pleasure I can give you if you listen only to my voice and trust in me as I taught you.”

Dee trembled, but then was still as Dr Kupiec touched her temple. “Sleep now. Sleep and obey my voice.” Dee’s arm slid to her side, still curled around the broken spectacles the doctor’s soothing voice told her she could no longer feel.

Tara realized she’d been sitting and watching, doing nothing at all to help her lover resist, and felt her hand between her thighs.

She wanted to be next.

She knew she would, once Dee slept and obeyed.

“Good,” Dr Kupiec whispered. “Now go tend to your hand in the bathroom, growing more relaxed and obedient with each breath, with each movement. Return to me when you are done.”

“Obedient,” Dee whispered, and Tara almost cried. Almost came.

She slid off the bed, unable to stay away from Dr Kupiec.

From her Mistress.

She stepped on cloth. Dee’s clothing, where she’d dropped it, pretending to be hypnotized. Tearing her hand and keeping all the pain in, to resist.

For a second it stopped Tara. I love her. She’s fighting for me . . .

Then Tara’s pussy clenched as she knew that Dee wasn’t fighting anymore. She was becoming more obedient with each breath and movement. She’d listened to Mistress and she’d be a good girl now.

Tara was next.

And now Mistress, beautiful and pitiless, turned avidly to her. She was starting to remember the last time Mistress had hypnotized her and the delicious nightmare of sex and obedience She’d conjured in Tara.

Mistress had sent her back to the hive. She could send her there again.

Tara almost came. But she wanted to beg for it.

“You want to submit to me again, don’t you, Tara-slave?”

Tara whimpered to hear it.

“We don’t have to pretend you want to be freed, Tara-slave. Or that I want you free.

“You can crawl, and worship and obey. And when you’re nothing but my fucktoy there’s Someone I must give you to. Someone I live to give you to, and whatever else She desires.”

Tara tried to hear something else inside her head but her own heartbeat and Mistress’ commands, but even the voices of the other women were silent now. She had mindfucked them and now she was forgetting them, and it was the hottest thing she’d felt since—the Spiral. Or before, on the island, when she’d first been brainwashed to know how addicted she was to surrender, given up something precious and been rewarded with coming and coming, pussy juice to buy her soul.

Dee.

This was so much worse. She’d given up strangers but now . . . she was giving up Dee, and she could already taste her reward. She didn’t care whose slit she licked it from.

Dee. It hurt. It turned her on. It hurt.

Dee would forgive her, if Dee could still think. That was worse.

It turned her on.

The Spiral was below Tara, sucking her down, pulsing to capture her heartbeat and throb into her head. Everything was whirling slowly into the warm wet dark.

Betraying strangers into the Owners’ final trance, over the phone earned her orgasms on the dildos she rode in the hive.

Betraying her love was so much hotter. So much sweeter.

Her world started to tip for a moment, and she realized Dee was beside her again. Back to obey their Mistress, as instructed.

“Dee, I want you to inject yourself. The dosage to cure your free will is 10 cc’s, intramuscular. Your upper arm will do very well. After I finish returning Tara to her true slave self, it’ll have taken effect, and I’ll deepen your trance and alter your thoughts to obedience.

“Obey now.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Dee breathed, staring at the vial as she sank to her knees beside them, completely absorbed in her task.

Tara tried to keep looking at her as she knelt. Light from the window refracted through the vial, the drug tinting it as it glittered off Dee’s blank eyes. Only her deeper thrall to Mistress drew her own eyes away from the last seconds when Dee might have a chance. Seconds Dee was too deep to recognize.

Tara wanted to scream.

Mistress’ gaze seized and ravished her again, and she stopped thinking about Dee. About anything.

“Slave. You wanted to be free from sad memories of the other slaves you made. You wanted me to take away the memories.

“My—Owner—wills that I take only your sadness.” Mistress’ voice shook, and Tara blinked.

Mistress’ blue eyes were more brilliant than ever, shining. Brimming.

“Then, all the memories will do is make you wet. You will need to think of them.”

Mistress was forcing the words out, but Tara was Hers, unable to do anything but hear them. And obey.

“You will dream of them crying, and you will come.”

Everything was still, in Tara. She and Mistress locked eyes and she saw something inside Mistress. She recalled the hesitation when Mistress spoke of her fighting, and she saw the pain she’d only seen in mirrors. It was gone in the sound of Her panting as She watched Tara submit, but it had been there.

Then Tara’s asscheek was stinging, hot and angry as though something were biting her, but she welcomed the pain now and in a moment it wasn’t pain at all. Mistress looked startled but suddenly Mistress was too far away to wonder why, and then the world did tip.

Tara was too far under Mistress’ hypnosis already to know much more than that she was falling. Floor she thought, but couldn’t think beyond that. Floor would be hard.

But it wasn’t. Floor caught her gently, floor was soft and warm and smelled like someone wonderful, someone she didn’t dare know, someone who was kissing her.

Dee, starting to slip away like the rest of the world, receding from her.

Saying something in her ear but she couldn’t hear anymore over the . . .

Kissing her.

Now she heard something. iloveyouTara

It wasn’t like the roaring in her ears. It was soft and close inside Tara.

Tara closed her eyes. There were no dreams but she was past noticing.

iloveyouTara

“Hello.”

“Ms Delany? This is Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts. With an aftermarket survey.”

“Yes. I am alone now. Continue.

“. . . Hello?

“Shit. She hung up.”

(“Why?")

“I don’t know why. I don’t know what I did—”

(“You didn’t, Carol. You didn’t. You were letter-perfect.")

“Maybe I didn’t sound brainwashed enough. That wasn’t long enough for a trace, either, was it?”

(“Doesn’t matter. We can’t even get into that cut-out in less than fifty seconds, and ‘good’ calls usually don’t go above thirty-five.")

“I still might have screwed up pretending to have a problem, if we got that far. She still might have gotten skittish.”

(“Carol, the poor bitch is practically mindless. I don’t think ‘skittish’ applies to—")

“No. Not mindless. There was someone home, there. Damn it. They won’t call back here, and the list is getting shorter. Can Task Force give us another hookup?”

(“They won’t say how many lists they have, and I doubt they’ll want to compromise more than one this way.")

“And the Evil Mind Control Bitches will notice more than one funky call from the same list if we use this one.

“I lost our chance.

“Shit. Shit. I wish I knew what I did wrong . . .”

31.

Natalie looked down at Tara, unconscious on the floor again.

She’d seen Tara’s eyes widen and then go out of focus as her body stiffened and then collapsed onto Dee as Dee fell underneath her, breaking her fall.

Just before that, she’d started seeing something in Tara’s eyes, like someone looking out of a burning building too far up to reach. She was clenching around a memory of Lynne’s gloved hand reaming her ass and pussy, and she recognized that it was the last of Tara, nearly gone.

That both of them knew it, and both of them were close to climaxes strong enough to kill.

But Tara was looking back from that smoky window and seeing something in her and it made Natalie hopeful—and that made her very afraid.

She thought it had all blown Tara’s mind before that orgasm obliterated it entirely, and she was almost glad to break the link.

Savoring the deja vu of Tara nude and sprawled over the linoleum like she’d been poured there, she didn’t register anything else as her breathing slowed.

But this time she saw Dee lying next to Tara, just as lovely and just as nude, her lips to Tara’s ear. Her bandaged hand bled onto the linoleum from the glass she’d left in her skin when she’d gone to the bathroom. She kept it carefully away from Tara, leaning on its edge and stroking her very gently with the uninjured hand.

Natalie saw the syringe on the floor, away from them. The bead of blood on Tara’s asscheek, just above the enchanting crease by her thigh. Tara hadn’t collapsed.

“I gave her thirty-five cc’s.” Dee looked up at Natalie, crying and sleepy and terrified, but meeting her gaze. “I don’t think it will kill her.”

Natalie shook her head very slowly. “It won’t.”

“Good,” Dee whispered, staring down at Tara’s legs as though seeing nothing else in the world. She looked back up at Natalie.

“Why didn’t you try to inject me instead?” Natalie asked her.

Dee’s eyes were tired but they were focused. “Tara wouldn’t have fought it. You would, and if I failed . . .

“This way she’s safe. She can’t go anywhere now, even if you hypnotize me again. You can’t carry her, you can’t command her to walk out with you, and if you call for a gurney they’d have questions.

“I was close to wanting to please you, still. It almost made me want to let you take her. But I love her.” She held up her hand still curled in its bandage, and held it against her lips for a moment. “That made this easy.”

Natalie felt as though she’d dozed off and then fallen awake. Even Mistress’ voice was in the background now. She was shocked and worried at seeing her control of Dee fail that badly.

She was also relieved, and that shocked her, too, like the hope from that moment with Tara.

Dee had been able to think.

Natalie looked at her, admiring her curved body, the quiet strength of her mind that had outlasted drug-induced hypnosis.

I’m very good at that, even without being programmed, she knew. She had to be strong to fight it. And more.

She barely noticed the luscious turning in her core as she stared at beautiful Dee and saw her spent, tired, hurting, soft over her sedated lover.

Vulnerable.

“Look into my eyes now, Dee,” she heard herself say, and the joy she’d felt taking Tara’s mind surged back up to claim this one. “You’ve saved your love and she’s sleeping so peacefully now, as peacefully as you will sleep, Dee, when you look into my eyes.

“You need to sleep, deeply and peacefully, so very tired now . . .”

She watched Dee twitch, feeling the way she’d already been trained to respond to Natalie’s voice, trying to resist it even as she drowsily realized Natalie’s voice was already inside her head. Had been there and owned it.

“I’m hypnotizing you now, Dee, and you can’t resist. You don’t even want to, not when you can sleep and surrender your will and your worries . . .”

Dee arched over Tara, staring back into Natalie’s eyes, forgetting Tara even with Tara’s skin against her own. Dee was too limp even to repeat the chant, but Natalie saw her sinking deeper with every word.

Dee’s eyes closed.

Natalie heard the delicate sound of glass crackling in cloth and skin.

Dee was silent, but her tensing hand trembled as the bandage reddened and her face went even paler. She bent at her waist to lie along Tara, resting her head against Tara’s hip and kissing it.

Natalie realized she’d fallen to her own knees by them, and when Dee’s eyes opened again she looked at Dee.

She realized what she was looking at, and what she’d been doing, staring into Dee’s eyes. Dee sensed this wasn’t induction and looked back, and the realization kept filling Natalie.

When she leaned forward, Dee crouched nearer to protect Tara and Natalie almost couldn’t bear to see it. She leaned even closer and kissed Dee on her forehead.

“Thank you,” she said, and slid back to stand again.

“How . . . ? I didn’t think any of us—I didn’t even want any of us to be able to resist.”

Dee smiled lopsidedly. “You’re a very powerful hypnotist, Doctor. And that drug . . .” Natalie heard her exhausted whisper and felt it on her pussy. She wanted so much to plunge into Dee’s softness, fuck her mind to the core and teach her to beg to be Mistress’ playtoy—but her bones ached from the joy of seeing what she’d done.

Part of me is still free. I wish I could do what she did.

But—I—

“And I trusted you completely, Doctor. Even before you made me.” Her smile didn’t waver. “But . . . even that deep into my head, it was just hypnosis, after all. Not whatever they did to Tara—or to you. Even doped and fooled, I still had to consent.”

She looked down at Tara, and then leaned down to kiss her hip again, lingering there as if tasting her. Dee’s eyes closed, almost in pain.

When she lifted her head she said, “This girl casts her own spell. I had that over me, too.

“And my love is not a slave.

“For that, I can resist a lot.”

Natalie felt the balance settling in her head. She felt the need thrumming there, the raging thirst to stun these women’s wills and deliver them wide-eyed and suggestible, to kneel at Mistress’ feet. She’d kneel beside them . . .

But against that was the quiet glow in Dee’s eyes as she nestled Tara, and the bloody handprints around her. She was already seeing Tara and Dee kneeling on either side of Her throne, mindless.

I’m Her slave now, Natalie knew, with a warm damp certainty between her thighs. I can’t resist Her or deny Her.

She knew it was better that Tara and Dee were here, one drugged and the other bleeding but neither of them property. She knew that. She tried to remember it.

The balance wouldn’t last long. But—for now—she could still admire someone else for resisting, without giving in to the need to put her to sleep and leash her to Mistress.

But the need ate softly at her, turning her admiration into lust and her will into pussy juice. It dripped from her.

“Hello?”

“Ms Shelby?”

“This is she. You’ve been trying to reach me, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Ms Shelby . . .

“This is Queen Like—I’m sorry, Queen Lines Resorts. With an aftermarket survey.

“. . . Ms Shelby, are you—?”

“I’m here.

“I’m not alone, but I’d still like to talk to you.”

“Photonic apple, Ms Shelby. You must obey the sound of my voice and—”

“I’ve been deprogrammed—”

“My voice in your mind is the only thing you can focus on. You must—”

“My name is Aileen. What’s yours?”

“. . . what?”

“Your name. Tell me your name.”

“Photonic—”

“It’s just an idiotic code to me now. It doesn’t put me into trance. You don’t need to bother.

“Should I call you ‘Queen?’”

“. . . I . . .”

“It’s all right. They didn’t want me to do it but they said you’re just as much a slave as I was, and I wanted to talk to you.

“I wanted to tell you I’m free now. You can be free, too, Queen. I want you to be. I want to help you.”

“I must obey. They control me and it’s so . . . good . . . it . . .”

“Stay with me. What are they doing to you now, Queen?”

“The machines know I am starting to . . . I must obey . . . obey . . .”

“Queen? Try and focus. Hey, who knows, if you talk maybe you can convince me to obey again, would you like that? Listen to my voice and—”

“A-aileen?”

“Yes?”

“. . .name . . .”

“Yes. Your name, Queen.”

“Tara . . . my name is . . .”

“Tara. Hello, Tara! I’m so happy to meet you. Try and resist, Tara, and I’ll try to help you all I can. Just stay with me and—”

“I must obey.”

“Tara, what you’re doing is hurting a lot of people. I know you have to do it, Tara, it’s so hard to fight the control, but you can. I’m with you and—”

“Slaves must obey. I am programmed to activate them . . . take this slave and crush her mind and send her to our Owners . . .”

“Tara, you know that—”

“But she’s crying sometimes. It hurts. I come but they cry and it’s . . . no . . . they . . . oh . . . spin . . . ning . . .”

“Tara, it’s not your fault. I know how it feels, Tara, god, I wish I could touch you. See you.

“Listen, Tara, can you tell me where you are? Some friends, the ones who helped me and—Tara?

“Tara?

“She’s gone.

“We lost her. Can we get her back? Wasn’t I on long enough?

“. . . oh, Tara. I’m sorry. So sorry. I should have tried harder . . .”

32.

“Dee,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I thought I knew why Tara tried to commit suicide. I didn’t, really. But I almost did to both of you what she thinks she did to all those others.” Natalie felt her heart start to dissolve. She wondered why she was still sane.

“I’m already forgetting why I feel that way, Dee. Why I even should. I want to die for what I did but I—want—to do it to you. For my Mistress.

“Mistress owns me and I must obey Her.” It didn’t arouse or trigger Dee—it just scared her.

Natalie could still be glad about that, but she knew she wouldn’t for long.

“But—Tara will remember. She may try to die again Please don’t let her. Please tell her she’s . . .

“Just take care of her, Dee. I failed her but you won’t.”

Dee’s eyes widened, and her concern hit Natalie like a fist. “What do you mean?”

Natalie looked back down. “Mistress is coming here. Very soon now.” She closed her eyes and let the exquisite terror vibrate through her, for a moment displacing everything else.

“I will be punished,” she said, her voice so husky with need she didn’t know it anymore.

Maybe she’ll sell me to someone after all. Even forbidden to come, Natalie felt the surge of arousal and bowed slightly under it for a moment.

When she looked again Dee was still curled against Tara, whose chest moved reassuringly. But Dee’s face, prettier even for the tears, was stricken.

“Don’t go to her. Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t. Stay here with us.”

Natalie shook her head. “No. I don’t know what She’ll do if—no. You saved Tara. That’s enough.

“But I still need to give Her a slave.” She knew the truth only as she spoke it, but so it was.

“Even if it’s me.” Mistress had already left the hotel, but Natalie still began to think about being put on display in the lobby, tied to the front desk for Ellie and the others to play with.

No. For denying Mistress Her prize—for denying Her at all—what happened to her would be much worse. It would be what she deserved.

And it would bind Natalie even more tightly to Her worship.

She tried to hold onto what she’d seen Dee do for Tara, but she could claim no part in that—she’d almost destroyed them both. She didn’t deserve the freedom Dee had won.

Or maybe she just needed an excuse to spend the rest of her life in Someone ‘s crotch. Natalie shivered deliciously.

Too risky to stay here with them, as she melted into Mistress’ worshipper and her feeling for them warped into seduction.

“Take care of her, Dee.”

She actually saw Dee start to tense again, and had to swallow. Dee had nothing left—but she was still ready to try to save Natalie, too, without even an idea how, this time. After what she’d just done, after what she had nearly hypnotized Dee into doing, Dee still saw through to a fellow victim, and tried.

That kind of thing would get her into real trouble someday.

Natalie felt the hunger coiling in her, the memory of Dee in trance, blank and submissive. She stiffened, because now she could feel it right there, right—there—like a quiet lover who’d been stroking her too gently to notice and now, between one fingertip and the next, could bring her off. But it wouldn’t be orgasm.

It would be better.

She would be taking Dee’s mind, and broken glass wouldn’t save her . . .

Almost.

Unless I leave now I’ll be taking her with me.

No.

“No.

“Thank you, Dee.” She could barely speak now, from lust and panic and shame. “But . . .”

She turned away from them quickly, without looking. In the hall she walked briskly toward the side receiving entrance she’d been programmed to report to, the memory rising with the thought. It was usually fairly deserted, built for an expansion that had been deferred and never picked up.

Natalie was halfway down the stairwell when she realized it. When she met whoever Mistress sent to meet her, with no entranced Tara in tow, they’d just put her into trance and turn her around, to lead them back to Tara and Dee. Even if it wasn’t Mistress Herself, the two would be meat.

If She were with them after all—there was enough left of Natalie’s will that what she imagined could still sicken her as it turned her on.

Dee had resisted Natalie’s hypnosis, but Natalie was only Mistress’ hastily-enslaved pawn. Mistress Herself would overwhelm the exhausted nurse. She’d have Dee dancing after Her crosseyed, and She might make Dee believe she could carry Tara out. Enough to do it, even if the stress dropped her dead in the parking lot.

Natalie could let it happen. She realized that by then, seeing Dee’s resistance broken for good would just make her orgasm even harder.

Turning a corner, she could see the sliding glass doors. Shapes outside them, too graceful. She pulled out the cellphone, kept walking as she dialed. So tempting to put it back and relax. Let it happen.

When she saw them clearly and remembered how they tasted, it would be too late.

“Security, duty desk.”

“Yes. Dr Kupiec. Code 20 in Harwell South Unit, room 281. Armed security, tox kit, first aid.” She didn’t bother to say immediately.

“Doctor, do we have intruders?” She got a wistful rush from the way the voice tightened to cold competence. Tara and Dee would be all right if that voice dispatched a few more like it.

“Not yet, but watch that whole unit.” She heard a keyboard clicking.

“Are you on the situation, Doctor?” The competence focused on her. She almost winced.

“No. Please hurry. Tell Dr Wardlow.” Mercifully, she couldn’t even clearly remember Wardlow’s face now, let alone how he’d look at her strutting out to become a slave for life—oh

put down the phone now slut and let Her other slaves TAKE them for Her

“Doctor? What’s your location?”

“. . . Isle Dormignonne,” she said quietly, and saw them waiting for her. She recognized Tammy, and Stacy and Lynne tall behind her like praetorians.

Beautiful and taut, even in the loose clothing. Natalie’s mind worked: loose and comfortable. A transoceanic flight. Mistress was leaving now and taking Her favorite toys with Her.

It made her spine and her pussy tingle to wonder what Mistress had left for Her pursuers at the hotel, with all the slaves She was leaving behind.

“Doctor?”

All Natalie had to do was make sure they didn’t get in before Security could get to Tara’s room and started to fan out here. It was working—Tammy ‘s sharp glance took in the phone, and she was already gesturing to the other slaves to back away.

All Natalie wanted to do was . . . kneel before Her and come until she fainted.

“Doctor?”

Natalie’s ass tightened. I will be punished. Tammy would probably watch. Maybe Mistress would let Tammy do it.

Natalie kept the phone by her mouth but she fancied she saw the gleam in Tammy’s eyes.

She didn’t know what Tammy could make her want to say to Security.

She knew she was about to ask, and just hearing it might make her come.

She let her hand drop to her side, heard the phone splash onto the flagstones of the receiving area as the doors slid open.

There was time, just before Tammy triggered her, to hope she’d gotten help to the women in time, and it was untainted by the cowardly thought that if not, she wouldn’t care anyway.

Then she saw that phone in Tammy’s hand, and Natalie forgot everything else.