The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Maria Vega tapped the code to her apartment door, and at the reassuring “click” , pushed herself into the hallway with a sigh of relief. It was the work of a moment to discard her 2-week-old pumps, which were still discreetly maiming her heels, and replace them with far less glamorous but far more comfortable slippers. Her work jacket slipped onto its hanger, her purse into its slot in the closet, and she moved on to her kitchen/living area.

Her apartment was high in one of the more expensive residential towers in Makati, and the picture window faced east out to the countryside. The green and white American cemetery in Bonifacio was just visible at the right-hand edge, and the city buildings in front of her eventually gave way to the hills and jungle of Tanay and Santa Ines, where the bundok began. When it wasn’t covered by a haze of pollution, the view was quite beautiful, but right now Maria wasn’t in the right mindset to appreciate it.

Instead, she went to her refrigerator and retrieved a chilled bottle of Sancerre, about two thirds full. She took a small glass from the top shelf of the refrigerator and poured herself a drink, returned the bottle to its space, and slumped on the soft leather armchair beyond the breakfast bar.

She gave a brief side-eye to her briefcase, sitting accusingly unopened by the closet, and picked up the TV remote. The papers in the case were going to need review sooner or later, but first she was going to unwind with her favorite soap opera. It had been that kind of week; all-go on the organized crime projects, with imminent deadlines from Malacañang, and not much yet to show for her team’s work.

Maybe, next week she could get traction on Carasaen. The Ilocano-based group was notoriously slippery, and most of the “knowledge base” about them in Luzon Organized Crime was more rumor than substantiated fact, but they were clearly steadily gaining influence over city government representatives across Luzon. Understanding how they were doing that had baffled her staff and collaborators so far, but sooner or later they were going to make a mistake—and she’d have a way in.

She sighed, and took a long sip of the wine. Time enough for those worries later. For now, some mindless entertainment with Tatay Lucky and his bakla buddies...

Twenty minutes into the show, she started to feel strange. Too much wine, too quickly? Surely not, she had only sipped half the glass. She leaned forward to stand, and the room swung around so alarmingly in her vision that she sank back into the seat, confused. What was happening to her?

“Potent, isn’t it?” A cheery voice came from her right.

She turned, clumsily, to see a woman in white hospital scrubs sit down carefully on the arm of her chair. Her dark hair was tied in a tight, formal bun, and she seemed to wear very little make-up but still have a light, shining face. She beamed at Maria, showing perfect teeth.

“Wha...” Maria struggled to find words.

“So predictable, I’m afraid, my dear. A judicious dose of medicine in your open wine bottle, and it’s off to Dreamland for little Maria.”

She reached out and took Maria’s unresisting hand, fingers feeling for the pulse at the wrist.

“Not there yet, but it won’t be long. The chair please, Ate Peng!“

A second woman came from the guest bedroom pushing a hospital wheelchair. She was older, gray streaks in her hair, and a mask covered much of her face. Parking the chair in front of the befuddled Maria, she knelt down and started undoing the woman’s blouse.

“The simplest way to remove someone from their home,” the first woman chirped, passing a bedrobe to the second woman. “No one looks twice at someone in a wheelchair.”

Between the two of them, the women made short work of undressing Maria, wrapping her in a robe, and securing her in the chair. Whatever had been in that drink had stunned Maria past the point of any resistance, even when the first woman held Maria’s phone in front of her face and she heard it unlock. She lolled in the chair as ”Ate Peng” covered her hair in a cap, and secured a mask across her face. Dimly, she realized that she was going to be unrecognizable as the two women removed her from her apartment to... wherever they were going. It was getting very hard to think at all.

The first woman had been busy in the kitchen, emptying and washing the wine bottle and glass before hiding them in a bag under the wheelchair. Maria’s briefcase, purse, shoes, jacket, and phone joined them.

“All done. Shall we go, Peng-Peng?” She donned her own mask, carefully adjusting it to hide nearly all of her features.

Maria’s vision started to blur as they exited the apartment, walking unhurried towards the elevator that led to the basement garage. Wherever they were going, she was going with them.

The boredom was the worst. The itches ran a close second.

Maria’s world was a small, heavily padded, white circular room. She had woken up here with no memory of anything since the two women had made her their captive. The floor and walls were covered with thick fabric; there was a (padded) door into the room, but its window had been covered from outside.

Maria was handicapped from exploring by a well-fitted straitjacket that firmly imprisoned her arms and hands. Her voice was unobstructed, but after an hour of increasingly desperate and unanswered yelling, it had become cracked and hoarse.

There had been two visits so far, both by masked staff in scrubs who had ignored Maria’s entreaties to help her, and indeed her threats of revenge. The first had given Maria water, which the briefly-grateful woman gulped down, and then spoon-fed her something like rice porridge until Maria rebelled at the blandness and refused to eat more.

Maria belatedly realized the lack of bathroom facilities in the room a few hours after that visit, but her hosts had anticipated her need. She had worked out that they had fitted her with an adult diaper under her shorts, so reluctantly had to “go” in it. An hour or two later, a second visitor had efficiently removed the diaper and shorts, strapped her ankles together, clipped them onto an anchor on the front of her jacket, and effortlessly rolled Maria onto her back before cleaning her as one would a baby. Maria had briefly considered kicking the woman once her ankles were released, but had the foresight to realize the likely consequences, and held back. Besides, the soothing feeling of the cleaning was quite appealing to her after the hours of confinement and lack of attention.

The absence of any external stimulus made tracking time impossible, and Maria had been hallucinating random sounds for quite a while when the door opened again. The attendant might have been one of the previous visitors, or might not—it was hard to tell. This time, she carefully pulled Maria to her feet and gestured towards a wheelchair parked just outside the door.

Cautious, but nevertheless curious, Maria took a seat in the chair and made a swift survey of her surroundings. It was a long, anonymous, gray-painted corridor, with no windows, and a series of doors in one wall that presumably led to cells like hers.

Her attendant tapped her on the shoulder, and pointed to a sign by the cell door in English and Tagalog;

“NO SPEAKING IN CORRIDOR”.

The attendant waved something in front of Maria—it appeared to be a hood made of canvas, with drawstrings but no eye or mouth holes. The implied threat was very clear.

Maria tried to gather information as she was wheeled down the corridor, but it had clearly been designed for anonymity. The doors were numbered, but no other detail was apparent.

They turned a corner, and the attendant pushed Maria’s chair through an open doorway into a small office.

“Thank you, Ate! You may go; please close the door.“

The woman behind the desk wore a loose white coat, under which Maria could make out an expensive-looking suit. There was something familiar about her face...

“You! You... kidnapped me!”

The woman smiled, showing the perfect teeth Maria remembered from her abduction.

“Oh, my child. I brought you here, into my premier psychiatric institute, to learn. You have so many misconceptions! All your work, beavering away at discovering financial connections between businesses, trying to make corruption crimes stick—it’s so unnecessary. Such a waste of your time and talents. Wouldn’t you rather put them to better use?“

She rose, and walked around the desk to stroke Maria’s shoulders.

“You may call me ‘Miss Kara’.”

“I’ll call you whatever I want,” said Maria indignantly, “and I can think of a few names right off the bat. How dare you abduct a senior Federal prosecutor? Do you have any idea of the heat you’re about to attract?“

Kara laughed, and tweaked Maria’s nose. “Oh, my dear Maria, no-one will mind that you’re gone.”

“That’s all you know,” grumbled Maria, aware of her schedule for the next week.

“I take it that you’re referring to the vacation you’re taking with your friend Mary-Jane?” Kara shook her head. “Six days away in the Visayas, a perfect time to get away from everybody. No-one will expect to hear from you.”

Maria opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again. “Oh, my saints. You got to her.”

“We ‘got’ to her a long time ago,” Kara agreed. “She has ensured that you and I will have plenty of time to get to know each other.”

“I can hold out on you for six days,” Maria said defiantly—though internally she shivered at the thought of what she might have to go through. “Then she—and you—are going to have some explaining to do.”

“Really?” Kara raised an amused eyebrow. “A total psychotic breakdown would explain everything, wouldn’t it? Are you sure that’s the way you want us to go, Maria? In this institution, we understand how to bring someone from insanity back to normality, but it’s not hard to move them in the opposite direction instead.”

Maria opened her mouth to start a retort, but her better sense caught it before it left her. She slowly closed her mouth and glared at her tormentor. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? I know people like you, and they’ve all ended up in jail.”

Kara actually laughed, throwing her head back. “Oh my dear, dear Maria. If only you understood—there really is no one like me.”

Maria smelled something antiseptic, then a cold wet dab on the side of her neck made her try to turn her head to see what was going on. “What are you doing?”

Her attendant had returned, and was working from a small tray with dressings, some uncomfortably sharp implements, and a small dish of antiseptic. Maria tried to pull away, but between the jacket and chair restraints she had very limited options.

“This won’t hurt much if you cooperate,” Kara reassured her. “Try to relax.”

Unwilling, but short of alternatives, Maria closed her eyes and tried to meditate. She had limited success, and when a sharp item pierced the tender skin of her neck she couldn’t help but yelp in pain.

“That was the worst part,” Kara assured her.

Some more attention to her neck, then her attendant seemed satisfied and moved away. Maria tried to see what she’d done, but the angle was all wrong.

Kara rose from her desk and moved to the side of her office. “Are you interested in wildlife, Maria?”

The question confused Maria. “Wildlife? What are you talking about?”

Kara pulled back the drapes on some wall shelving to reveal a glass tank, much like one that Maria’s father had used to keep tropical fish. This, however, contained soil, several large rocks, several thick sticks arranged in a loose structure, and some small vines. A bright light in one corner cast long shadows in the far part of the tank.

One of the shadows moved.

Maria gulped as a dark brown, scaly, rope-like body slid over the rocks in the tank. Two black eyes in a hood-shaped head stared at her, and a red forked tongue flicked in and out.

“Carasaen,” said Kara, proudly. “The Philippines cobra. This little darling is only a juvenile, of course. Would you like to hold her?“

Maria was struck dumb with fear—she had been bitten by a snake as a child, and although it had been a “dry” bite, she’d been left with a morbid fear of them. Unable even to shake her head, she stared at the snake’s unblinking eyes like a paralyzed rabbit.

Kara stooped to open a small refrigerator, and removed a vial. “We analyzed the venom, and it turns out to have some very interesting components. Unlike most other snakes, it’s a pure neurotoxin, with no hemolytic or cardiotoxic aspects. My biochemists managed to separate out its components, and do you know what they found?” She drew a small syringe from the vial, replacing it in the refrigerator.

Maria’s throat was as dry as a bone, but she managed to croak out “What?”

Kara crossed the room to her, and did something with the syringe near Maria’s neck. Maria felt a coldness at the site where the attendant had been working.

“One of the components has a very interesting stimulating effect on the female libido.” Kara placed the now empty syringe on a tray. “Another acts like a psychoactive in many people. You’ve heard of the tarantula bite, that myth claims causes people to dance hysterically? These toxins do something very similar.”

She patted Maria on her shoulder. “We’re going to speak again, my dear, but for now I need you to go with Ate Peng. We have a little show for you to watch.“

Her attendant returned, driven by some invisible cue, and respectfully bobbed her head to Kara.

“Peng-Peng, please take Maria to Deconstruction.”

“Deconstruction” turned out to be a room very similar in shape to Maria’s cell. Instead of padding, though, the walls, floor and even ceiling were mirrored. As Peng pushed Maria’s wheelchair into the room, an infinite cascade of Marias was visible wherever she looked.

Peng busied herself attaching the straps that hung from the center of the ceiling onto Maria’s straitjacket. Once satisfied in their fastening, she pressed a button, the straps tightened, and Maria was pulled up out of the chair, her legs dangling uselessly. Peng followed up by attaching a cuff to each ankle, clipping the cuffs onto additional straps, and letting the straps pull Maria’s legs up behind her.

Her final act was to tape several electrodes to Maria’s face. Apparently satisfied, she removed the wheelchair and closed the mirrored door behind her.

Maria swallowed nervously. She was able to see in the mirror that the attendant’s work had firmly fixed some sort of transparent tubing running into her neck, and in other circumstances that would have concerned her, but a much more pressing issue was the growing redness at the edge of her vision. Whatever ‘Miss Kara’ had given her was starting to take effect. She felt a tingling running up and down her spine, and a warmth spreading throughout her body. Hanging helpless as she was, there was no alternative but to let the sensations run amok within her.

There was a quiet hum, and she heard the straps creak as she started to spin slowly in her harness. The room wasn’t perfectly mirrored, and so she could tell from visual artefacts that she was spinning, like a dummy in a store window. Another time this would have been humiliating, but for now she was trying to draw breaths and keep her mind clear, as the red fog rose in her vision.

Suddenly the room flashed white, an unbearable brightness, and she reflexively closed her eyes—the purple after-image still lingered for a while. As she cautiously opened her eyes again, she saw that a pattern of colored lights had illuminated behind the glass, and was now appearing to spin in the opposite direction to her. The assault on her already-compromised senses was formidable, and now a barrage of white noise started to play in the room.

“No! Please stop...” Her voice trailed off as she realized, even in the fog of intoxication, that her pleas would fall on deaf ears. Helpless, she gazed with blurred vision at the strobing, spinning pattern of lights around her.

Now a new sound joined the white noise, a continuous babbling of meaningless syllables, just familiar enough to cue her brain to try to understand them. The pulsing in her head that coincided with each pulse of the lights made it impossible for her to think; an open vessel into which the room was pouring its audio and visual noises.

Suddenly, it was dark and quiet.

Maria became aware of a wonderful, soothing warmth on her back, arms and legs. Her whole body felt limp, and she seemed to be no longer suspended, but lying on her back, staring up at blackness. There was a faint, strange scent teasing her nose.

Kara’s face appeared before her, smiling. Maria could do nothing more than stare at her, as Kara slowly lowered her lips to Maria’s and took a long, sensual kiss. Maria felt a surge of desire pass though her body, but was unable to respond as Kara’s soft, delicious tongue slowly explored every part of her mouth.

Kara finally withdraw, still smiling at Kara. She dipped her head lower, and now Maria felt the tongue caressing her small breasts. A moan of pleasure slipped from her lungs, and now small teeth gently touched the very edge of her nipples. She wanted to pull Kara closer to her, but her arms were useless; instead, she could only keep staring upwards. The scent was now much stronger, and it felt as if it were spreading through her body, weakening each muscle as it passed, leaving her limp as a wet cloth.

Finally satisfied, Kara’s tongue moved away, and Maria panted with the implacably-strengthening desires within her. She wanted the tongue back, but could not summon the words to ask.

When the tongue slid between the soft lips of her sex, however, she mewed in a confusion between pleasure, desire and lust. The skilled, warm, wet organ knew exactly where and how to touch her. She was vaguely aware of her fingers trembling, but—still without control of her body or even voice—surrendered to the slowly rising tide of climax within herself...

She was back in her cell, back in the jacket, curled up on the floor. Her head still felt fuzzy, and she had no idea of how much time had passed, but now she was acutely aware of her sex demanding immediate attention. With no hands available, however, her options for gratification were severely restricted. She tried to grind against the floor, but the diaper removed most of the friction.

She was almost inexpressibly relieved when her attendant arrived with food and water.

“Please,” she begged, “let me out. Let me touch myself—mmph!” The attendant plugged her mouth with the nipple of the water bottle. Reluctantly she swallowed a few mouthfuls. As the nipple was withdrawn, she renewed her pleas. “Just a few strokes —” She was cut short again by the attendant spooning the gruel into her mouth. Whining in frustration, she took in the proffered food as quickly as possible.

As the attendant packed up the feeding implements, she tried again. “Just a minute, please! I’m burning here!” She wriggled in the jacket, frustrated at the short distance between her twitching fingers and her aching sex, but the attendant appeared oblivious to her.

The attendant’s last action was to draw a syringe from her pocket and insert it in the port by Maria’s neck. She felt the familiar warmth as the contents entered her system, and realized with fear that the sensations were about to get stronger....

Maria screamed with frustration as the cell door closed, then closed her eyes and tried to meditate.

At the attendant’s return, an unknowable time later, Maria was way past any notion of dignity. She rolled onto her back, pulled her legs up to the correct position for cleaning, and glared at the attendant, daring her to ignore the obvious demand.

The attendant took her time cleaning Maria, very carefully and gently wiping around her sex. Maria closed her eyes, and shuddered every time that a swab ran across her lips, trying to hold back groans of frustration. But the attendant was very careful to minimize contact, and when she re-dressed Maria and unbuckled her legs, Maria was still miles from any kind of satisfaction.

The additional dose of whatever snake drug Kara had ordered was starting to mess with Maria’s head, aggravated by her total loss of sensation of time. She could have sworn that, at one point, she was back at her desk at work, but that was clearly impossible. She writhed on the floor, desperate for some additional sensation of any kind. She heard Kara’s voice in her ears, but couldn’t understand a word that was being said. Suddenly she saw dark brown snakes sliding over her, and gave a scream of fear, but then they were gone as abruptly as they had arrived.

By the time the attendant brought the wheelchair into the cell, Maria’s mind was like the gruel she’d reluctantly eaten earlier. She was in a daze as she was pushed down the corridor towards Kara’s office.

In her befuddled state, it took her a while to realize that they had gone way past Kara’s office, and in fact were in a different wing of whatever building this was. Here, the walls were a docile pastel pink, and the floor apparently made of rubber tiling going by the sounds of feet on its surface.

Her attendant pushed her into a small room, where a second attendant was waiting. Together, they lifted the helpless Maria onto a short couch, then pulled out stirrups from the end and secured Maria’s legs to them after removing the shorts and diaper. Maria was left to stare up at the mirrored ceiling, seeing herself exposed for all to see, but the churning in her mind subdued whatever modesty impulses might have fired.

Her attendant adjusted something at the end of a couch, and switched it on. There was a hum, and Maria felt the couch vibrating in sympathy with something. Squinting, she could make out a bulbous item placed between her legs, a hair’s width away from her sex.

Careless of her dignity, she wriggled and pushed to move herself across the inch or so between her lips and sexual satisfaction, but the attendants had done their job well, and her groin was immovable.

Maria cursed, desperate to gain relief, but nothing worked. She banged her head on the couch in frustration, but the padding prevented any injury. She strained her arms, trying to burst the stitching on her jacket, but it had been made with precisely this scenario in mind, and for women a lot stronger than Maria.

She was drooling with frustration when a face appeared above her, and she recognized Kara.

“Oh, my dear. They left you a little bit short, didn’t they?”

Kara turned a knob with an audible “click”, and Maria felt the vibrator move closer. By now, her hypersensitive lips could sense the waves of disturbed air coming off the head of the device, but it was still well short of satisfaction.

“More! Please, just a bit more...”

“Of course, my dear Maria... pray, tell me, why?”

The lawyer within Maria would have counselled her to shut up, but was overcome by the raging hormones and desire.

“My pussy is on fire! I need to come! Make me come!”

“Make me come please, Miss Kara.” Kara’s lips were shaping into a broad smile, but Maria was far too far gone to notice.

“Please! Miss Kara! Aaaah!” One or two substandard stitches in the jacket actually popped open from Maria’s frantic attempts to relieve herself, but the rest stubbornly held fast. “Make me come!”

“Of course, of course.” Kara lowered her cheek to just above Maria’s lips, letting the near-delirious woman draw in her scent. “And what will you do for me, Maria?”

Dignity and control long departed, Maria had no hesitation. “Anything you want! Anything! Just get me onto that thing!”

Kara lightly stroked Maria’s quivering sex, with a tough just gentle enough to avoid stimulation. “Your password and key fob PIN for your work account, perhaps?”

“Cap-S, d, a, at-symbol, cap-K, six, b, hashtag!” Maria drew breath. “PIN 5396! Please, I’m dying!”

Kara raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow at the quiet woman in the corner with Maria’s laptop. The woman tapped at the keyboard, consulted the digital display fob hanging off Maria’s clutch, and tapped again. A brief pause, then she shook her head.

“Oh, Maria, why do you torment me so?” Kara shook her head. “We’ll have to leave you like this for a while, unfortunately.”

“NO!” Maria’s protest was loud enough to shake the room. “It’s not my fault! Maybe she mis-typed! Try again: Cap-S, d, a, at-symbol, cap-K, six, b, hashtag; PIN 5396.”

The laptop operator nodded confirmation.

“Thank you, my dear. Enjoy yourself.” Kara pushed the vibrating wand through several clicks until it locked against Maria’s thrusting lips—the bound woman promptly shoved herself against it, and gasped in a mix of relief and ecstasy, grinding herself up and down as much as her bonds would allow.

Kara slowly stroked the quivering mound, as Maria pushed herself closer and closer to climax, smiling down at the desperate woman. “I’m the only thing in your world right now, am I not?”

Maria, lost in the depths of her hyper stimulation, could only moan in reply.

Kara carefully altered the angle of her stroke, giving the tiniest flick towards Maria’s nub and bouncing it off the vibrator. Maria’s whole body momentarily tensed as the tiny but intense sexual shock flowed over her.

“Your whole world... Everything that matters to you. The apex of what you seek. Your beginning, and ending.”

Maria whimpered, her lips forming inaudible words.

“Just let go, Maria. Come to me. Come...”

As the girl’s muscles relaxed, Kara eased the vibrator further onto her, and slid a slick single finger into her sex.

“You’re an extension of me, Maria. I curl my finger;”—she did so, causing Maria to convulse with sudden pressure—“and you curl with me.”

She gently stroked the soft walls of Maria’s sex until the girl was nearly insensible with desire, eyes fixed on the fuzzy image of Kara’s smiling face.

“My little baby viper,” Kara purred, withdrawing her finger and tasting it in on the tip of her tongue. “Vipers bite, don’t they, Maria? You want to bite right now, don’t you?“

She did indeed; a pressure was building around Maria’s jaw. She drooled, looking around, desperate to expend the pressure on something, but nothing was to hand.

Kara slipped a leather cuff onto her narrow wrist. “Come on, my carasaen. Bite me... Bite me NOW!” She slid her protected wrist into Maria’s gaping mouth, just as she angled the vibrator for maximum stimulation of Maria’s hyper stimulated clit.

Maria bit down with frightening force, feeling her teeth dig deep into the soft but thick leather. At the same time, her climax exploded across her body like a city’s New Year fireworks. Lightning flashed across her eyes, and a long scream fought its way past Kara’s wrist. Then it was all black...

Kara nodded to the attendant behind Maria, who pushed another dose of venom extract into the woman. She carefully removed her wrist from Maria’s now slack mouth, and released the cuff, impressed to see that Maria had actually managed to cause a small bruise on her wrist even through the leather, though no skin had broken.

“My perfect viper....” She stroked Maria’s sweat-soaked forehead. “So easily taken, weren’t you? Oh, it’s always the clever ones, the imaginative ones, who come over so quickly.”

The attendant started to unfasten Maria, carefully sponging her to remove most of the perspiration. Kara pulled a pair of headphones off a rack beside her.

“I know you can hear me, Maria,” she remarked to the unconscious girl, adjusting the headset size. “I’ve turned off your higher functions, but your sexual Id is still there, waiting to be played with, isn’t it?”

She leaned over the unconscious girl, tucking her hair out of the way before carefully siting the headphones over her ears.

“Now you can listen to Mistress Kara’s instructions.” Kara stood up, and nodded to the attendant. “Instruction Set Three, all the way through, please Ate. Then jacket her, and take her back to her room.“

“Yes, ma’am.” The attendant plugged the headphones into a small AV unit, scrolled through several channels, then hit ‘Play’.

Kara stretched. “Time for a bath, I think.”

Maria nodded awake with a small start. Where was she?

Her eyes adjusted to the gloom quickly, revealing her living room. The TV was on, showing the news, though the volume was low. The sky outside was darkening, the evening shadows of her building on the city below long gone.

She stood, a little unsteadily, and looked around. A mostly empty wine glass on the coffee table, the remnants of a small salad and veggie lumpia on a plate nearby. She was already in her night clothes, a silk robe wrapped around her for warmth.

With a yawn, she turned off the TV and made her way to her bedroom. Time to get some rest.

Downstairs, in the building’s underground garage, Kara and Peng carefully folded their empty wheelchair and tucked it in the back of the anonymous white van which had brought them—and Maria—here.

Kara settled herself in the rear seat, and took out her phone. “Back to the Institute please, Gloria.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her driver smoothly steered the van up the ramp and carefully merged into the late evening Makati traffic.

Kara switched to a calendar app, and selected Maria’s face from a drop-down list. The calendar view promptly populated with Maria’s schedule for the next working week. Kara scrutinized the entries until she found the one she was looking for...

“Well, my dear Maria, I look forward to hearing from you on Friday. And I am sure that you are going to enjoy hearing from me.“

Maria’s week at work was busier than usual. Crime and the processes of the law hadn’t stopped just because she’d taken a vacation, and even though her deputies had picked up some of the work, there was still plenty left that only she could make decisions on. After four ten-hour days, plus working during her chauffered commute, she felt strongly in need of a second vacation.

Fortunately she had Friday morning appointment at “Gloria’s Palace”, an exclusive spa only ten minutes from her office. She hadn’t made the appointment, of course—it had simply appeared in her calendar. Yet, she didn’t question its spontaneous appearance—she only knew, seeing the invitation, that she had to attend.

She arrived precisely on time—abhorring the practice of “Filipino time”, her important engagements were always intended to happen on schedule—and presented her ID to the apparently permanently-smiling receptionist. Had the smile faded for even an instant, she was sure that the make-up layer would have cracked. Or maybe, it had been permanently tattooed onto her face.

“Thank you so much for visiting us, ma’am. Miss Sol is ready for you.” The receptionist indicated a smiling, bowing woman in immaculate white scrubs.

“Please come with me, ma’am.” Sol led Maria through a secure door, down a short corridor to a treatment room. “It’s so nice to have you visit us! We are truly honored.”

“Thank you, Sol.” Maria looked around, seeing the usual tools of the beauty trade. “How do you want me?” She started to feel a little dizzy, for no obvious reason—the room was a pleasant temperature and scent, but whenever Sol came close to her, her head started to swim.

“Just on the couch, ma’am. There’s a robe for you on the side. I’ll be back when you’re ready.”

Maria obediently shed her business dress after Sol left; the room had thoughtfully-provided hooks and hangers to keep her clothes crease-free—and settled herself down in the chair. She closed her eyes and breathed very slowly in and out on a counted beat, trying to align herself with tranquility...

“You’re ready for me, ma’am?” Sol’s gentle touch on Maria’s shoulders had somehow come from nowhere. Reflexively, Maria breathed in—and inhaled something. She wasn’t sure what it was, but a faintly familiar scent passed through her nose and she felt her head spin as her whole body relaxed.

“Yes—yes, I’m ready, thank you...” Maria tripped over her words as she tried to process the new feelings.

Sol viewed her client critically. The freshly-applied pheromone swab appeared to be working just as expected; her reactions made it clear that this lady was clearly one of the Carasaen.

“Very good, ma’am. Just a moment, please.” Sol unlocked a small fridge in the corner of the room behind Maria, removed a vial from it, and drew up a small syringe. She swabbed Maria’s limp left elbow, and delicately delivered the hypodermic into her vein. Maria gave a small gasp, but didn’t even turn her head.

Sol gently massaged Maria’s face from behind for a few minutes, feeling the woman’s muscle tone go progressively looser, and hearing her breathing become slower. Finally, satisfied she was in an appropriately receptive state, Sol slid a soft sheet over her client’s chest, and reached in to a small cabinet to retrieve a set of wireless headphones.

Sol switched to a hidden app on her phone, selected Maria’s name from the list, and hit “Play”. Her phone obligingly started to stream its preprogrammed audio to the headphones. Sol then reached into the side pocket of Maria’s purse and retrieved a small USB key; this plugged into the side of her phone and caused a small animated hourglass to appear as the download progressed.

Sol quietly sat on her stool, reading a novel, until her phone gave a soft chime about fifteen minutes later. She gently slipped the headphones off Maria, unplugged the USB key and replaced it in Maria’s purse, then pulled out her lotions and ointments and started to give Maria the facial treatment which had been listed for the appointment. Sol was a perfectly good beautician, but her work as a message and command relay for Carasaen was her most important role.

An hour later, with her client’s skin giving off the expected glow, and the venom extract now dissipated in her client’s body, Sol gently touched Maria’s shoulders.

“All done, ma’am. I’ll wait for you outside, please take your time getting up.”

She patiently waited in the lobby until a reinvigorated Maria strode out.

“Make sure you drink plenty of water today, ma’am,” she advised as Maria made her payment. “And watch the sun, it’s quite strong today. I put sunscreen on you, but no sense tempting fate.”

“Quite, thank you Sol.” Maria gathered up her things. “Thank you so much!”

“We’ll see in you in three weeks, ma’am. Take care!” With a deferential bow, Sol opened the door to allow Maria’s exit.

In her clinic, sat at her workstation, Kara watched the files downloaded from Maria’s key appear in her folder, and smiled. There was going to be no trouble keeping ahead of the prosecutor’s office for quite a while.