The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

[No! He can’t...]

[What’s he thinking...]

[Alex, don’t do it...]

[Baby! Oh my god, why would you...]

“Stop,” I said. “Enough.”

No one had actually said a word, but I could hear as clear as day that they didn’t think much of my plan. I wasn’t too wild about it either, but things were getting desperate. There were only twelve days left until the alien High Command blew up the East Bay. I didn’t think they were bluffing, when they had threatened our resident alien with his own destruction if he didn’t fix his insurgent problem.

“But, Alex,” Jill said, “think about what you’re suggesting. Do you really want to get into a mind war with creatures that have already enslaved the entire planet? What makes you think you can do anything to them, even if Cassie’s crazy idea works in the first place?” Around her, several other women nodded. Erica had her head in her hands, sobbing.

“We’ve been over this,” I said. “This battle is for the entire planet. We can’t hold anything back, especially since we know that they could leave here any day, and decide on a whim to destroy us on their way out of town.” I went over to where Lani sat, and took her hands. Tears ran down her cheeks as she looked up at me. “I know you girls love me. I love you all, too. More than anything. But I need to make sure that we’re all still alive to enjoy our time together. Without that, there’s nothing.”

“We could hide,” Erica said, finally looking up at me. “We could go somewhere that they won’t bother bombing, like the desert, or Lani’s island. We could bring everything we needed to survive, and just start over once the aliens leave.”

“There’s no way to tell what they’re going to do when they don’t need us any more,” I said. “They might just leave us alone, or they might blow up the cities and leave the rest of humanity to fend for themselves. If they destroy the infrastructure, then normal behavior will break down, and everyone will eventually die. They might use radiation, or bio-weapons...” The faces around me were getting more distraught than they had been when I first announced my plan. “I don’t want to die thinking that I could have done something to stop it.”

No one said anything after that. Either because they saw my resolve, or because they knew deep down that I was right; we couldn’t just run and hide.

“What about the other three?” Amber asked. “How do they feel about it?”

“Scared,” I said. “But they still think it has a chance. They’re really very strong when they’re together. Their bond is pretty profound.”

“We know, Alex,” Lani said softly. She picked up her head to look around the room. “We have the same thing, or close to it. I’ve felt it among us since you first freed Amber. It gets stronger, the more of us there are in close range of each other.” She gave me a wicked smile that was diminished in part by her red face, and tear-streaked cheeks. “Why do you think we like to all be in bed together? Did you think it was because of you?” Several of the girls laughed, and the tension in the room started to dissipate.

I was surprised at Lani’s revelation that there was a bond between the freed women, but when I thought about it, it made sense. Their brains had all been molded into the same basic “shape,” just like the former Arbiters. It obviously wasn’t as strong as the connection between Kara, Elizabeth, and Megan, but I was actually happy that the women I’d freed from the alien mind control had a special relationship that was unique to them.

“So,” I said, “I’ve heard your objections, but I’m going to have to overrule you all on this. I’ll be going to San Jose General tomorrow for the procedure. I need all of you to do your jobs without me for the next few days, and get all of the parts of our plan ready to go. In seven days, we go on the attack.”

A siren sounded from a hidden speaker in the corner of the mansion’s greatroom. Vivian came running through the entry from the kitchen. ‘There’s a ship right above us, Alex! They found us!”

“Everyone get your helmets on, now!” I screamed. I had my Faraday helmet over my head in just a couple seconds. If we couldn’t get out of range before the ship released its EM pulse, this would be the first live test of their effectiveness. Anatoly had done some testing on converted subjects during the eight-day pulses, but we’d never used them for real, and never with the EM source hovering just a hundred meters above us.

“If the ship is here, the Sentinel isn’t far behind,” I said. “We need everyone to start the evacuation plan, immediately. Get the rest of the people in the house to the garage. Lani, call Mateo. Get Private Wright out here, fully armed, as soon as he can get on the road. Vivian, call Kara, have her keep everyone in place at her location. We need to—”

I froze in place as all of my muscles tightened up. Around the room, everyone did the same. I heard an explosion from the kitchen, possibly an appliance blowing up from the pulse. My mind was strangely calm under the mesh and foam rubber of my helmet. There was a tingling that stood my hair on end, and an itch behind my right ear, but I didn’t feel my brain matter trying to rearrange itself inside my skull.

I couldn’t hear the thoughts of the others, since the helmets disrupted the connection we shared. Erica and Scarlett clutched at their heads, but they didn’t seem to be in pain. Amber, Jill, Mei, and Lani huddled together, arms around each other.

The feeling slowly passed, and my arms and legs loosened up. I flexed my fingers, feeling a joint-deep ache that was echoed through my entire body.

“Why does it smell like cherries?” Amber said.

“I don’t know about that,” Erica said, “but everything suddenly looks green.”

The pulse had obviously affected us in some way, in spite of the helmets. I had to hope that the sense-scrambling came from absorbing that much EM energy, and not because Albert had finally won our battle, and converted us all. For some strange reason, I realized how disappointed I would be if this was how it ended. It wouldn’t be a very good story if—while we were creating a bold new strategy to save the planet—we were suddenly mind controlled, and the aliens just went about their business like we never mattered. Not a great Hollywood ending.

I shook my head to clear it. “OK, let’s find out how bad it is. Gather everyone in the garage. Start the evacuation. Vivian, come with me, we need to arm ourselves.” I hoped that Albert’s newest Sentinel was still some distance away, since without PFC Wright here to fight him, we had no way to defend ourselves against the red super-soldier.

“Let’s move!”

“What do you want to do, Alex?” Cassie asked.

“About what?” I said. “Pick a problem, any problem, and the answer will be pretty much the same: I don’t know.”

“You know,” she said, wrapping her arms around my waist and pressing her lush body against me, “you sound just like this professor I had at Oxford. He was a sexy, tall Yank, just like you, and he was a brilliant scientist, but when things got overwhelming he just threw up his hands and screamed ‘I don’t know.’” She looked up at me. “Thing was, he did know, he just needed to take a step back and get his thoughts in order.”

She rubbed her cheek on my chest like a cat, and made a happy humming sound. “You know, there was a girl there, a friend of my roommate’s, who used to help him get his mind right.” She ran her hand down my front and rubbed me through my pants. “Maybe you just need a little help to focus.”

I chuckled, and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sure it would help,” I said, “but I’m not sure we have time for that right now. We’re pushing the boundaries of our window as it is. That ship really screwed things up.”

“Well,” she said, squeezing me around the waist, “I’ve covered my part. The graphene filaments have all been grown in the lab. They’re ready for the operation.”

“OK, that’s one problem solved.”

“Which problem is that?” Amber asked as she walked into Cassie’s lab.

“A small one,” Cassie said, pulling back from me.

“But it’s a start,” I said.

[Did I intrude? Was Alex going to fuck Cassie? Damn, that was bad timing...] “ I, um...came to tell you that Anatoly was ready to show you his results whenever you have time.” She turned back toward the door. [Now I can get out of here and let them get down to it...]

“Hold on, Amber,” I said.

[Shit. I took too long...] She turned around, smiling. “Yes?”

I laughed. “Don’t play coy with me,” I said. “Remember, I can hear everything.”

[Shit, again. I forgot about that...]

“Come back here,” I said. I looked around the lab. Being a government facility, Lawrence Livermore Labs was a lot more utilitarian than the Silicon Valley tech companies, but the large lab space had a lounge area off to one side, with a coffee maker, and more importantly, a couch. I took the hands of both women and led them over. When we were in front of the couch, I let go of them and tugged my t-shirt over my head. “Go ahead,” I said, “get naked.”

Cassie looked worried for just a moment. As a true Unconverted, she wasn’t bound by any more than her natural attraction to me. But she had been naked with me when the other girls were around, and had never seemed all that shy. Amber didn’t hesitate, already unzipping her white pants.

I got my shoes off, then my pants. I turned around, and two pairs of eyes went to my hanging cock. I sat back on the couch, and watched the two lovely girls finish undressing.

Amber joined me on the couch, settling on my left side, leaning into me while my arm went around her shoulders. “So, lover,” she said, kissing my cheek, and running her hand up my thigh, “what are we doing?”

“I’m a little out of sorts, and Cassie had a notion that she could help me...what did you say? Focus?” I held out my arm as the young grad student got her socks off and joined us.

“Yup,” Cassie said, as she sat on my other side, snuggling under my arm. My hand fell naturally onto her soft breast, and I ran my fingertips lightly around her large areola and over her puckering nipple.

“So, the question that Cassie originally asked was about the operation,” I said. Amber teased my stiffening cock and my balls with light caresses. Cassie kissed my chest, and pushed her tits harder into my grip. “I’m convinced we need to go forward with it.”

Amber stiffened in my arms. [I really wish Cassie and Anatoly had never told him about the possibility...] Her touch firmed up, until she was stroking my hard shaft in a steady rhythm.

Cassie kissed my neck, which tickled a bit, but not enough to be distracting. I let my hand slide off her breast and over her belly, until it wedged between her thick thighs. She quickly opened them for me, and I ran a finger through her wet crease.

“I think the operating room at San Jose General is still safe,” I continued. “Albert has shown no signs that he thinks we’re in that part of the city. All of the team members are around and unaffected by the ships. I’m going to arrange it for tomorrow afternoon. Can you have the filaments ready for transport tonight?” I had two fingers in Cassie’s pussy, moving them slowly in and out of her obscenely wet hole.

“Mmmm, oh god, yes,” she said. I assumed she was answering my question, not just responding to my touches.

“That puts me out of commission for at least three days,” I said. “The implants need time to establish themselves in my brain tissue. Anatoly’s nanites are supposedly going to help, although I’m still leery of letting him put his little bugs in my skull.” Amber leaned down and slid her lips over my cock. I laced my fingers through her hair, occasionally giving her a little encouragement in the form of downward pressure.

[Fuck yes, make me take it...]

Being able to hear my girls had become a blessing and a curse over the past weeks, but I counted it as a blessing now, as I forced my cock deep into her throat. She hummed her pleasure, and her acceptance, around my buried shaft.

“That leaves the question of the Arbiter and the Sentinel. Hopefully, we can detach this Arbiter from her helmet before my procedure tomorrow. I haven’t heard what kind of shape she’s in, but Kara and the other two should try to get her ready, and see if they can get her connected to their group.” Cassie was pawing at her own tits, as my pistoning fingers brought her close to orgasm. Amber had her hand between her legs while she deep-throated my cock. Her thoughts were getting less coherent as we continued.

“I need an update from Mateo on his progress with the third Sentinel. Mmmm, that’s so good, Amber.” She whimpered happily at the compliment. I could tell by her movements that she was getting close as well. I felt her lips and tongue and tight throat muscles around me, but I was too keyed on solving my problems to be anywhere near cumming.

“I bet Albert was pissed that we took away another set of minions,” I said. The arrival of the Arbiter and Sentinel had taken a while after the pulse at the mansion, probably because the drive was so long from most places in the Bay Area. By the time the same white Mercedes SUV arrived at the mansion, Mateo and Curtis were on site, along with our most powerful minion-controlling gear yet. The duo had just barely exited their car when their minds were no longer the property of the Chrxjthal. I was excited—the more humans we took away from alien control the better—but I was also worried. Another failure for Albert could result in an early detonation of the reaction device that Alien Central Command had promised to deliver.

“Oh, fuck...yes, Master, thank you, Master,” Cassie gasped, as she convulsed in a powerful orgasm. Her thighs clamped around my hand, and her whole body shook. She buried her face against my chest, and her panting breath came so hard and fast I was worried that she might pass out.

[Master...?] Amber’s thought echoed my own. I’d never said or done anything to Cassie to get her to say something like that. I could only imagine that it was a flashback to her abuse at the hands of her mentor, Dr. Adkins, and his two male students.

Cassie’s breathing was slowing down on my right side, just as Amber brought herself off with her fingers on my left. She plunged her head down over my dick, taking it deep into her throat as she trembled through her orgasm. I took my hand away from her head, and reached down to cover her furiously rubbing fingers, as she teased the last bits of pleasure from her clit.

All the while, my mind was considering logistics and schedules and personnel. Maybe there really was something to Cassie’s theory about how to focus during stressful times.

Amber barely had time to pull away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, when Cassie scrambled into my lap. She turned her back to me, and reached between her thighs, guiding my cock into her drooling entrance. She sat down with a moan, her wide ass splaying out over my thighs. She was incredibly hot and wet inside, and loose after her orgasm. I tipped my head back on the couch and closed my eyes, soaking up the sensations while I pictured various critical path diagrams, and how they all had to meet at a single point.

Cassie rose up and sank down on me, giving a little yelp as my cock nosed into her cervix. I felt her inner muscles tightening around me as she started bouncing on my lap. Amber knelt up beside me, and I turned to give her a kiss, squeezing her large breast while her tongue slithered out to meet mine.

I pulled away from her for just a second. “I think it’s going to work,” I said, before I went back to her warm lips.

Several times now, since this adventure started, I’d woken up in a hospital bed, or a hotel room, with anxious women hovering over me, as my body or brain recovered from some injury. And I’d been through quite a few tests and procedures in my brief career as a rebel general. But I’d never gone through the lengthy process of being prepared for surgery like this. The converted medical staff performed with a cold efficiency, that strangely made me feel better about putting my brain in their hands.

[Oh my god, where’s his hair...?]

I turned to see Scarlett standing next to the gurney. She was serving as Vivian’s assistant during my down time. I held out my hand, and she wrapped it in both of hers.

“It’s fine,” I said. “They shaved it off so it wouldn’t be in the way. It’ll grow back.”

“It better,” she said. “I’m not one of those women who think bald men are sexy.” Her worried eyes betrayed her smile, and her attempt at humor. Plus the fact that I could hear what she really thought.

“Wait until you see what I look like after the surgery,” I said. “Dr. Rassi said I’ll have so many wires coming out of my head that it’ll look like a ponytail.”

[That’s not funny. Doesn’t he realize how worried we are...?]

I squeezed her hand. “Really, Scarlett, it will be fine. Look how lucky we’ve been so far—how far we’ve come in our fight. This is just the next step, OK?”

She nodded, but the worry stayed in her eyes. “Well, while you’re here, I’ll make sure everything stays on schedule.”

“I know you will,” I said.

Dr. Li came into the room with a couple orderlies. “We’re just about ready. Time to take you in,” he said.

Scarlett leaned down to give me a kiss. “I love you,” she said.

“Love you, too. See you on the other side.”

Nothing had really changed, except that my balance was a little off. I used a cane just to keep a sudden attack of vertigo from sitting me on my ass, but essentially I was the same person I’d been four days ago. Only now I had a hole just behind my left ear, where a collection of graphene filaments emerged from my skull, and connected to a three centimeter long wiring harness, currently taped to my neck to keep it from flopping around.

The surgery had gone well. I’d actually watched the replay of it yesterday, feeling a little queasy as I saw Dr. Rassi and his assistant implant the filaments into the different sections of my brain. Each tiny carbon wire had been coated in nanites that helped ease its passage through the brain tissue, and provided insulation from the activity of my other neurons by building up a coating of myelin around it once it was in place. The activity was still going on, and while the brain itself doesn’t have any nerves, I kept thinking that I could feel the little bugs moving around inside my skull.

The connections had been placed in all of the areas that an Arbiter would be wired to inside her helmet, except for the pleasure receptors. Speech, vision, hearing, all of it was connected in the same way that unlucky women around the world were currently experiencing.

My pleasure centers, both neurological and hormonal, had also been messed with, but in a far stranger way. I had an actual “pleasure switch” in my head now, where I could turn my good feelings on and off. It had been the strangest thing that Anatoly had suggested all those weeks ago, but it made sense in context.

I moved slowly and carefully down the corridor of the veterinary clinic that had housed our Sentinels since we first captured Mateo. Research into the aliens’ control of their minions had all moved to this building, including everything to do with the Arbiters and their strange fishbowl helmets.

Once we had more than one helmet in our possession, I’d had the engineers get more aggressive in examining them. We’d sacrificed Kara’s original helmet, the one that I’d carried into “battle” three times before. It was the most likely to be damaged internally after all of the use it had been through, so I felt it was the most expendable. It had taken one of the more powerful cutting lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Labs to crack the shell, but once we’d got it open, it had been a gold mine.

We’d discovered the mechanisms for air and water, how the filaments inside the tube extended and contracted, and some of the basics of the communications gear inside. The alien technology was beyond anything that we could duplicate at this point, but that didn’t stop us from sussing out the basics. We knew, for example, that when a signal came in here that a circuit activated over here. It was like learning how a car worked without being able to shape metal or generate electricity; we could use what already existed, but we couldn’t do much more.

I opened the door to the small workroom. The bulk of Curtis’s frame, as well as Mateo in his chair, took up a good portion of the space. There was a testing bench, with a helmet clamped to it. It had the safety mesh over it, to keep Albert from tracking it remotely, and painted on the mesh was a crude Roman number three. So this was Megan’s helmet. Hers was in the most pristine shape, since Elizabeth’s had been damaged slightly in its removal, and Kara’s was in pieces many kilometers to the east.

I saw another one on a back table, with no number on the covering mesh, and realized that it must be the one that had just been removed from Maria Lejsková, the fourth Arbiter in our expanding collection. The Czech woman was in her forties, and had not recovered as quickly as we’d hoped from her ordeal. Kara and Elizabeth were with her at San Jose General, while Megan was here with us.

“Sir!” PFC Wright snapped to attention, with a loud clash of armored bits. Of course everyone else in the room turned to stare at me, and I felt self-conscious under their gaze. It had nothing to do with them, it was just me having second thoughts about what I’d done to myself. This was so far beyond anything that I would have imagined doing even a year ago, and the fact that we were so desperate that I had allowed a bunch of mind-controlled doctors to fuck with my brain, had me feeling a little overwhelmed. Again. It seemed to be my natural state lately, and in spite of all the support that I got from everyone around me, it was all going to come down to me. Again.

I sighed, and waved at Curtis to stand down. “So how are we doing with the harness?” I asked.

I hadn’t seen Anatoly when I first came in, but he emerged from behind Mateo’s chair, holding a diagram in his hand. “We are almost there, Alex,” he said. “I would say over eighty percent. It should be ready to test by tomorrow morning.”

“You’re sure?” I said. “We’re down to six days, and we’ll need most of those for other preparations.”

“Da. I am sure,” he said. He squinted as he looked at me, specifically at my left ear. “May I see?”

I walked over to him, and turned my head so he could see the filaments and the wiring harness. He didn’t touch, which was a relief.

“We should test-fit the connector while we have you here, Alex.” He picked up a piece from the test bench; the female counterpart to the male connector sticking out of my skull. “Will you allow me?”

At least he asked first. Someone brought a chair, and I sat down while Anatoly put on gloves. I felt his fingers carefully prying up the tape that kept everything close to my head. There was a click, and he stepped back into my field of view.

“A perfect fit,” he said. “Tomorrow should be very interesting.”

“So how does it work?” Lani asked.

We were in the large master bedroom of a commandeered house near the hospital. The professional couple that lived here were in their daughter’s room, on an air mattress. Several houses in this neighborhood had all been usurped by my growing contingent.

“How does what work?”

“Your switch,” she said. “I heard about it, but I want to know how it works.”

“And why would you need to know that? I’d think you would rather turn me on, than turn me off.”

She slapped my shoulder. “Of course I would, but why would you have the doctors install it in the first place?”

“You know that everything we’re doing is based on the Arbiter technology, right?” She nodded. “And the aliens control their Arbiters through pleasure, but a kind of overwhelming pleasure, that has as much effect on the women in the helmets as extreme pain does on the men.”

“It’s hard to imagine pleasure being used like that,” she said. “Although I’ve talked to Kara, and she told me a little about it. But that stuff is for the women, and you’re a man last time I checked.” She reached down to fondle me through my boxers to prove her point.

“Yes, but a lot of the pleasure signals are the same in men and women. There are some differences, but more similarities. That’s why I have the switch. If I’m using Arbiter technology, I can’t have the pleasure signals getting through to my brain. I’m making myself immune to their form of torture.”

“But you still haven’t told me how it works.”

I took her hand, and rubbed it over a spot on my temple. “Feel that?” She nodded, sitting up in bed to look at where I held her fingers. “There’s a receiver under the skin. If I pass an encrypted signal to the receiver, it bypasses my nerve receptors and my endocrine system. After it’s triggered, it takes at least an hour for the hormones in my brain to be depleted enough to be effective, but after that, I won’t feel any pleasure. In fact, I won’t feel much of anything.”

“But isn’t that dangerous?”

“It can be. You can’t just turn off things like your hormones,” I continued. “There’s half a dozen different ones involved in pleasure, and some of them are necessary for other body functions as well. Dr. Goldberg has advised me to only use the switch for a maximum of three hours. And after I turn it back on, I’ll be out of it for a while when my brain has to deal with all of those chemicals again.”

“I don’t like it,” Lani said. “It’s crazy to mess with your body like this, Alex. You’ve become some kind of cyborg. There were a lot of good reasons why the U.N. outlawed that stuff back in, what, ’21?”

“’22. I know, baby. I don’t like it very much either, but the fact is, the way the aliens attack us is through our brains. They don’t threaten us with violence, or lock us up in prisons, they control us by using our own brains against us. So we need to make ourselves immune to their control, and right now the only way we can think of, is by adding these bits and pieces.” I unconsciously touched the harness behind my ear.

Her hand was still rubbing me through my boxers. I ran a finger down her chest and over her brown nipple, making her shiver. She leaned in close and gave me a kiss. “Maybe when this is over, I’ll have Dr. Goldberg adjust your device to double your pleasure, rather than kill it.”

My three former Arbiters came in as I was getting dressed.

“We might have a problem, Alex,” Kara said, sitting down on the rumpled bed.

“What’s that?”

“Maria,” Elizabeth said. “We’re not sure if she’s ready.”

“Is she still too weak?” I asked. “She’s only been eating for the last five days or so.”

Megan shook her head. “It’s not just that. It’s the shock of being free of the helmet, plus she—”

“—found out something terrible about her family,” Kara said.

“What happened? Are they lost somewhere?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “They’re—”

“—dead,” Megan finished.

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “What happened?”

“She was a social worker, for Santa Clara county. Married—”

“—with five children. But her kids were watched during the day by her sister, and the sister—”

“—died because her food supply shut down. The problem is that Maria had no normal behavior to feed her kids lunch or dinner, and her husband—”

“—had no behavior to feed them at all. He also didn’t cook, relying on the sister-in-law for most of his nightly meals. Maria ate at her office, so she was doing fine, but—”

“—her children slowly wasted away and died, followed by her husband. Each time, the Arbiter, one of us probably, would—”

“—command her to ignore the loss, but when we got the helmet off her, all of that grief came back.”

“She isn’t responding to anyone right now,” Kara finished. “She just sits and cries.”

I almost wanted to cry, myself. I knew there were millions of stories like that, all over the world, and I actually felt that we had been pretty lucky in that regard. Kara’s girlfriend had died, but Elizabeth’s and Megan’s families were still around. So were the families of all my freed girls, although we hadn’t checked on Lani’s parents in a while. Still, no one had had to deal with the loss of a child, let alone five.

“Well, there’s no way we can force her to do it, but I’m already uncomfortable with putting you three out there, with no tech to protect you. Do you think we’ll be strong enough?”

Each woman looked around at her two companions. Obviously they were communicating on a level that I couldn’t reach, although their “conversation” made my head buzz a little bit. I figured that was a side effect of all that new hardware. Finally, Elizabeth spun around to face me.

“Yes,” she said simply. “We can do it.”

The convoy that we brought with us was impressive. Three box trucks and two vans rumbled up the street toward Albert’s lair. Mateo and Curtis, along with Mike and another shooter, took point. We had no idea if the aliens had managed to bring in another Sentinel yet, after we kidnapped the last one. Mike and Jason—Eddie’s replacement—carried two heavy bags of equipment to the roof, while Mateo monitored things from his chair inside the truck, and Curtis patrolled the area around the rear door of the admin building.

I gave them ten minutes, but there was no sign of a Sentinel, so I sent everyone else in. We rumbled to a halt in a line, and twenty people got out onto the dirt road. I had all of my shooters with me, plus Vivian, looking like a badass in her combat gear, with her rifle slung over her back. Everyone had their Faraday helmets on, in case Albert summoned a ship.

Anatoly and Cassie had several minions unloading equipment, while I took my combat team to the rear entrance. A mismatched set of metal doors had been installed to replace the ones I blew up last time, but these didn’t even meet in the middle, let alone lock. I pulled one side open, and we streamed inside. I remembered the layout, and took the team unerringly to the torso room. We walked in like we owned the place, and started setting up.

The wall to Albert’s room was still opaque when the first attack came. A warning chirped from a sensor cone that someone had set on one of the torso boxes.

“Gas!” I yelled to everyone. The converted shooters were faster than the rest of us, since they didn’t have to think before they pulled on their masks, just follow their ingrained instructions. Everyone else hesitated a bit, and I caught a faint whiff of sulfur before I got my mask over my face.

“Oh, fuck me. That’s just bloody disgusting.” Cassie was the last one into the room, her mask and her helmet in place. She was staring at the torso boxes and shaking her head. Yellow mist started to cloud the air.

“Cassie, what is this?” I asked.

She held up a device—a portable analyzer of some sort—and trailed it through a billow of gas. She checked the readout and waved her hand like it was nothing. “Sulfur dioxide,” she said. “Mixed with sodium thiosulfate. These buggers don’t know much about us, do they? The concentrations of SO2 are probably deadly without a mask, but the other stuff they mixed it with wouldn’t have any bad effect on us.”

“Albert’s desperate,” I said. “I think he just released whatever he had in the tanks that support his artificial environment. OK, let’s get everything set up.”

Minions came in, carrying air movers, power supplies, electronics, and two of them lugging a mattress through the door. Fans hummed as the sulfur-laden air was pumped out of the room. Cassie and Anatoly directed traffic, and in a dozen minutes we were ready.

As if on cue, the wall went transparent, and Albert faced us through the barrier. Cassie gasped as she got her first live look at an alien. He already had his control device up to his “face,” so when the egg-shaped generator in the middle of the room opened a small hatch, and a cable snaked out, we were ready. Two of my shooters unhooked batons from their belts. The telescoping rods had nooses on the ends, for use in trapping dangerous animals; I’d found them in the veterinary clinic and thought they might be useful.

Both guys got their loop around the waving cable, and tugged the noose tight. The alien technology was strong, but the two men held on with all the dedication of the converted. A third man stepped up with a stun wand in his hand, and I turned to watch Albert as my soldier put fifty thousand volts through the cable. Sparks flashed behind me, but I was looking at the alien. He jumped—not very high on his stubby rear legs—and threw his control piece to the ground in front of him. I smiled at him, but I doubt he knew what it meant.

I was enjoying this, but not as much as I should have, because I’d already turned off my pleasure responses on the ride over. In another ten minutes, the clock would start on my three hour window of feeling nothing

“How’s the perimeter look,” I said over the comm.

“Nothing unusual,” Amber replied. “No sign of a new Sentinel anywhere.”

“His bosses may not have given him a new one, since he kept losing the old ones.” I had to tell myself to calm down; I was entirely too cocky at the moment. This whole operation could go sideways in an instant. We’d done all right so far, but the most difficult and most unknown part was still to come.

As the minions stood around waiting, a low moan came through the audio pickups in my helmet. It was joined by another, and then a whole chorus.

“Christ! What the fuck?” Cassie was staring at the torsos thrashing in their boxes. “I almost shit myself. Is he trying to talk to us?”

“Yup,” I said. “Lani, you getting this?”

“Yes. Alex. Just a minute.” The macabre choir continued their song, and I caught the repeat point after a few cycles. “Here it is, baby,” Lani said.

“Leave now low creatures, or you will be destroyed.”

“Low creatures?” I said over the general signal. “They don’t think too much of humans, do they? I guess we’ll have to show them how serious we are.” That was my brave speech for the troops, but I quickly switched over to a personal connection to Vivian. “What do you think, beautiful, is he bluffing?”

“Why are you asking me, Alex?”

“Because I trust your judgement,” I said. “You’re logical, and level-headed, and you can give me an answer I might not like.”

“You say the nicest things, young man,” she said. “But, at the moment, I think we have him where we want him. They seem like a pretty arrogant race, so I wouldn’t put it past them to bluff.”

“Just what I was thinking. Thanks, old lady.”

“Are you going to answer him?” she asked.

“Not with words,” I said.

Anatoly come up to me, barely glancing up from his pad. “Everything appears to be ready, Alexei,” he said. “We can start as soon as the women arrive.”

I called out for another perimeter check. Mateo and Curtis assured me that we were secure. I flipped my display to one of the outside remote cameras. “OK, Kara,” I said. “If we’re going to try this, now is the time.”

The door on one of the vans opened, and the three former Arbiters got out. I was surprised to see Kara call over two minions, and have them lift something out of the van. It was a wheelchair, with a tiny figure sitting in it, wrapped in several blankets. I had no idea why she would bring Maria; the woman was still too weak to walk, and her emotions were so raw that I didn’t see how she could possibly get her mind to bond with the others. Still, I wouldn’t second-guess Kara on this, since she knew her people far better than I did.

Albert was perfectly still behind his wall. I wondered how he was “seeing” us at the moment. He probably had sensors in the CPU/generator device, and they were sending him an electromagnetic 3D map of the room, and all the activity going on inside. I stared back at him, trying to measure his character and his resolve while I waited.

Kara finally came through the basement door, followed by Elizabeth, and then Megan, pushing Maria’s chair. They all had their mesh helmets on, and Maria looked like she could barely keep her head upright under the weight. Every one of them took their time, staring at Albert, and then at the torsos in the boxes. I had a sense that they were already connected, even though that was impossible with the Faraday helmets on. Maybe just their closeness as a group was keeping them calm in the face of such strangeness. They completed their brief tour of the room, and then stopped at the foot of the large mattress that had been laid on the floor next to the egg.

“Well,” Kara said, “this will make a great story some day.” She gave me a nervous smile, and started unbuttoning her top. Behind her, Elizabeth and Megan did the same. “Alex,” Kara said, “can you lift Maria down to the mattress?”

I leaned over and whispered into her helmet pickup, “Are you sure it’s a good idea to have her here?”

“She needs to be here, Alex, trust me,” she said.

Taking her at her word, I moved around to the wheelchair. The woman looking at me from beneath the helmet was as close to death as anyone I had ever seen. Even Kara, covered in dirt and nearly gone, hadn’t looked this bad. The parts of her face that I could see were sunken and sallow, with patches of blotchy red skin staining her chin and left cheek. Her eyes, behind the clear visor of the helmet, had receded so far into her skull that I couldn’t see what color they were.

“Hello, Maria,” I said, trying to keep my voice light, “I’m Alex. We haven’t met before, but I’m sure you’ve heard about me from the others.” She didn’t move at my words, and if it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest I would have thought she was dead. “I’m going to lift you out of the chair now.”

She turned her head to look at me, as I slid an arm behind her, and got my other one under her knees. She barely weighed anything as I lifted her. She whimpered in pain as I went to my knee next to the mattress, and tried to gently lower her to the surface. As I pulled my arms away, a naked Elizabeth was there, holding her hand. I looked up to see all three women had stripped completely.

Kara looked at me, with her hand on her hip. “Your turn,” she said.

It was interesting to note that my sense of the absurd wasn’t connected to my pleasure centers, because the feeling was in full force as I looked around at the buzzing activity.

Anatoly had set up a stand, close to the egg, and on top of it was the blue dome of Megan’s Arbiter’s helmet. I went over, close to the stand, and started stripping down. Finally everything was ready. I took one more look at Albert, and tried to clear my mind.

“All right, everyone, you know your jobs. Vivian is in charge while I’m offline. Keep us safe, and don’t panic at the things you see or hear from us. This is probably our last chance to do something before the aliens kill a lot of our fellow humans. We have to do everything we can, even if it costs us our minds, or our lives.” I knew that last part was a little melodramatic, but I was never much of a public speaker, and I’d just said the first thing that came to me.

“Be careful, baby. I love you, no matter what happens,” Lani said. Everyone added their own good wishes, and then I had no more excuses to delay.

I took off my Faraday helmet, and set it on the ground. Anatoly handed me a long cable with a connector on the end, and I reached up to my head, to find my own connector. The two ends clicking together sounded unnaturally loud in my ears. The other end of the cable disappeared inside the Arbiter’s helmet, where each individual wire had been matched with a filament from the helmet’s connection tube. I was now wired into the helmet, exactly as if I’d put it on and let it drill into my skull. Everything except the control wires; the ones that led to the pleasure centers of the female brain. None of those filaments were connected to anything, and as an extra safeguard, any capability I had of receiving pleasure in my brain had been switched off, electrically and chemically.

Nothing happened when I attached the cable, other than feeling the weight of it dragging at the skin on my head. The helmet was still covered with its mesh, so no signals could interfere with us yet.

I backed up onto the mattress and laid down, soft hands guiding me into position. Naked legs and breasts pressed against me, but other than feeling their texture and warmth, they did nothing for me. My cock stayed limp against my thigh, and my brain refused to acknowledge the sensuality of the moment.

The three women surrounding me all took off their helmets, and their connection bloomed in my mind, solidifying into a pillar of light that pulsed with coiled power. Without my ability to feel pleasure, my contact this time wasn’t about male versus female. Or at least it wasn’t about cock and pussy. It still had a yin-yang dynamic, but it was more along the lines of nurture versus aggression; of stoic endurance versus dynamic anger. I was the tip of the spear, and they were the power that could hold me back, or let me fly.

Anatoly must have removed the Faraday cover from the Arbiter’s helmet, because my consciousness was suddenly assaulted by noise and movement. I pulled back into myself, and the three women braced me, keeping their solid presence at my back. I was getting all of the input from the helmet now, from its sensors, through its native filaments, down the wires, and into my graphene implants. The idea was that I could see and feel like an Arbiter, but without the negatives of starving to death, and being crippled by intense pleasure.

[What are you doing, human?]

Albert’s “voice” didn’t come through like before, when we had been receiving signals through our four-way sexual brain-meld. Now it had a channel from him, to his torsos, to the egg, to his transmitter, to the Arbiter’s helmet, and then to the language area of my brain. Clear and direct. We’d managed to bridge the gap between our two species in a way we hadn’t before, this time on equal footing. This wasn’t just him issuing orders to his mind-fucked minions, this was him having to actually communicate with me, because he couldn’t impose his will. He wasn’t just a light in the void anymore, or a chorus of moaning, half-dead torsos—now he had a glowing pipeline into my head, just like I had into his.

Of course I realized that all of my talk of being able to “see” inside my mind was really just the way my brain coped with its unique handling of electromagnetic energy. Everything that the aliens did among themselves, and what they had twisted human brains into doing, was based on their communication through EM signals. The human brain had been too chaotic throughout its evolution, to serve as an antenna for any particular band of energy, but the aliens had taken care of that with their brute-force rearrangement of our electrical pathways. They had opened up a whole new means of communication, that I was just beginning to understand.

The way I visualized the things going on in my brain was simply my way of interpreting the flow of EM pulses that passed between me and the three women, and between me and the signals from the helmet. The two inputs actually had a very different “flavor” to them. The connection I had with the girls was symbiotic—we were like tuning forks vibrating on the same note, where the addition of each new person didn’t change the tone, but did increase the power of the signal. There was no need for language among us, because we communicated through the music in a raw, emotional way.

The connection to the aliens, however, was more like the short-wave radios that we had used in the early days of The Plan. Each transmitter and receiver had to be dialed in to the correct frequency in order to trade information, and even then, there was no guarantee that the people on the other end spoke your language. To get a clear message across, you needed signal boosters, and background filters, and language translators to all do their jobs correctly.

It had taken a lot of imagination, and a lot of engineering, but we’d managed to cut through the static and get a real connection between humans and Chrxjthal. If my pleasure centers hadn’t been deactivated, I would be quite pleased with our success.

So far I’d been able to hear Albert, now to see if I could talk back to him. [I am communicating with you, to ask you to leave us alone, to leave our planet peacefully.] It was harder than it sounded to think in direct sentences—to do it without other thoughts or random senses intruding, I had to imagine the words written on a page, and then think of reading them out loud, but stay in my head at the same time.

[Why should the Chrxjthal care what the violent beasts on this planet want? You creatures are only needed for your ability to fight against our enemies. Your thoughts mean nothing.]

These guys were real pricks. Not only had we figured out that they were misogynists, but they were prejudiced against other species as well. They were like the old, white men of the galaxy; treating their women like property, and getting people they deemed inferior to fight their wars for them.

No sense beating around the bush then. [If you do not leave us peacefully, we will find a way to make you leave.]

Something came through the connection, but it wasn’t speech. It was a feeling of turmoil, and heat. If I had to guess, I’d say that Albert was getting mad, or whatever passed for mad among his race.

[Your people are weak. You have no say in our actions.]

[I have killed two Chrxjthal so far, and I will keep killing you until you leave Earth.]

I felt something then, from the three Arbiters lying around me. Their connection screamed with unbearable pleasure, as Albert released the same signal that the alien Alistair had used in Salt Lake City. I felt a twinge of pain roll through my body, like I was being poked by thousands of needles, but most of the excruciating agony seemed to be blocked by my new brain accessories. Not so with the women. I could feel them writhing on the mattress beside me, and their screams came at me from two directions; the pickups on the Arbiter’s helmet, and my own ears.

We had expected something like this, and almost as soon as the girls started reacting, Anatoly carried out his instructions. He barked an order to the two minions who still held the cable that had extended from the egg device. Using their capture poles, they forced the squirming wire down to the surface of the Arbiter’s helmet. The tip of it attached itself to the smooth surface, and once again, my brain leaped through another radical shift in perception.

It was like I’d been seeing and hearing Albert through a murky pool of water that had suddenly been drained. My connection to him was direct and crystal clear. I was receiving images and “emotions” that I couldn’t interpret with my human senses. I also saw the commands that he was issuing to his equipment, telling it to attack his attackers. The difference now was that I wasn’t just seeing his commands, I was connected to them. I could touch them, and hopefully, I could affect them.

[Stop hurting them!] I flung myself at the command controlling the pleasure signal, striking it with my imaginary fist and knocking it into the ether. The panicked thoughts of the Arbiters calmed as the pleasure signals ebbed, then disappeared. In the back of my mind, I could feel their gratitude, and their resolve to support me as they regained their power.

Bolstered by their support, I sent my thoughts flitting through the network that I was now joined to. I saw how Albert controlled his device, and what some of its capabilities were, including how he generated the pleasure and pain signals to control his minions. There were other branches of the network that extended beyond this facility, which allowed me to see how the hierarchy of the invasion was laid out.

There was a ship in orbit, that controlled the actions of the two groups at work on Earth. The first group were the aliens manning the sixty-four “factories” around the world, converting human military into red-armored intergalactic warriors. The other group were the wardens, the ones who kept the rest of the population in check while the Chrxjthal created their army.

Albert was the warden for this sector. It was interesting to discover that as much as I had feared him over the past months, he was really nothing more than a low-level flunky. He was at the bottom of the pyramid, reporting to at least three levels of alien bureaucracy above him. I just brushed the connection to his immediate superior, but didn’t go any further up the chain—no telling what the network safeguards were on the mother ship.

[Get out!] The command slammed into my brain like a meteor, and I retreated from my exploration. I felt an overwhelming need to get out of here. I desperately had to...

[Resist him, Alex. You can’t let him command you.] My need to retreat vanished, as my trinity came to my rescue. I hadn’t thought that Albert could control me through my new connection, but it appeared that he had some tricks I hadn’t anticipated.

[You can’t control me!] I was angry, and frustrated, and confused by all of these new realities, and I lashed out at the only concrete target I had—the alien on the other end of the wire.

The scream that came though my connection wasn’t really a scream, since the aliens had no vocal cords, but my brain felt it as one. It was a message of surprise, and fear, and worry about being harmed. I felt the satisfaction of the others as they watched me thrust the sharp blade of my aggression at the creature who had caused them so much pain and loss.

Their satisfaction turned to fear as Albert struck back. The signals from his mind tore through my constructed reality, and left me in a darkness that was more than just sensory. I was cut off from everything, including the three Arbiters, and I started to panic as I lost all sense of time and direction. With nothing to push against, I shoved my will against everything at once, like I was standing inside a balloon, and inflating the walls with every breath. Slowly, my bubble of self-realization expanded. It took a second, or an hour, or a day, but the blackness around me lightened.

Hope made me push harder, and as the pressure against me lessened, I started to sense things. Mostly, it was the agonizing pleasure coming from the women at my side. Albert was after them again, and merely yelling at him to stop wasn’t going to do the trick this time. I was oriented in space once more, knowing where my body was, and “seeing” the pathways through my brain that led to the helmet, and from there to my enemy.

I knew that in reality, Albert and I were engaged in a battle of who could generate the strongest and most focused electronic signals and send them along a wire, but in my mind, I was charging at a faceless blue giant with a spear in one hand, and a bronze shield in the other, like some legendary Spartan warrior.

I thrust the spear forward, but my opponent brushed it aside as we collided. I pushed against him with my shield, but I was being driven backward, back to the void. I was frustrated as I tried to hold against the onslaught, until I remembered my old high school football coach, and his lecture on leverage. Suddenly, I was in full pads and a helmet, and the thing in front of me was a blue tackling sled. I bunched my legs, lowered my shoulders, and pushed. My backward progress slowed, and then stopped. My imaginary legs burned with the strain, but I got low, and shoved, until the sled moved. Just a centimeter at first, then another, my feet churning up the turf with my forward motion.

We battled back and forth. Albert had home field advantage, knowing from long practice exactly how to use the capabilities of the network, and every time he attacked, I had to summon my will, and gather the strength of my trio of former Arbiters, and try to push back. It was exhausting, and I felt myself starting to lose focus.

As my concentration flagged, it caused the other three to start losing their connection with me. Once their strength wavered, the crushing force of the alien’s mind came down on me. Before I knew it I was back in the void, but this time, no amount of outward pressure could help me break free. Disappointment surged through me, allowing the cold grip of despair to seep into my brain. I had gambled, and I had failed; the aliens were too strong, and too advanced for our cobbled-together attack to have any effect. Even if I kept my consciousness free, there was no way to prevent the aliens from completing their plan. Better to just relax and give in to the blackness...

Like a shot of adrenaline to my heart, something stabbed through the darkness, and brought me back to life. My three angels were back, but they didn’t act like before. Where they had always been strong and nurturing, now they were chaotic and aggressive. Their power burned through my brain and into the network, shattering the sphere that Albert had placed around me. I rode along with their frenzied attack, no longer the tip of the spear, but just a simple soldier in formation, supporting my fellow soldiers as we marched forward.

As the strength of the Arbiters’ bond washed through me and past me, I felt something new, something white-hot and burning with intensity, and I realized why everything felt so different.

[Maria?]

The emaciated woman had joined the group, and her grief, her anger, and her single-minded need for revenge fueled us as we tore back along the pathways of the alien network. She was searching for her target, and with unerring focus, she found him at the end of the wire.

Albert’s mind threw up a barrier in front of Maria’s attack, but she tore through it like tissue, and then threw herself into the maze of his alien consciousness.

My perception shifted, and I was “looking” out through the transparent wall at a collection of human bodies, five of then lying down and four standing upright. The entire image was like a grey and blue topographical map, but I was able to distinguish my own form, and my three girls, and the naked skeleton of Maria lying on top of us all.

[No! This can’t be happening! Your race is not intelligent enough.] Albert’s “voice” was as close and clear as I’d ever heard. [Stop this! Get out of my head!]

The white heat of Maria’s emotion flared even brighter as she understood Albert’s vulnerability. She launched our combined energy into his consciousness, with no plan other than to destroy whatever she could. I tried to calm her down, since I didn’t want Albert dead—if he died, his bosses would likely destroy us—but she was a force of pure passion now, not listening to anyone’s logic. She flooded Albert’s mind with her hatred, spitting Czech invectives at his neural connections.

{Are you having difficulty?} The voice that came to us wasn’t Albert’s, and it didn’t belong to any of my girls. I wondered if our enemy had sent out a distress signal, and this was the return call from the rescuers.

Albert was in no condition to answer, as he defended himself against Maria’s fury. I was panicking, sure that his superiors were going to blow us up at any second if they didn’t hear from him. In a desperate move, I gathered my thoughts, and tried to find the origin of the transmission.

[There is no difficulty. Everything is normal.] I knew that there was no way I could impersonate a Chrxjthal. My only hope was that the aliens on the other end of the connection felt exactly like Albert did, that there was no way a human could get into their communications, so even though he sounded weird, logically it had to be their warden speaking to them.

As I waited for any indication that my desperate ploy had worked, Maria continued to run rampant through Albert’s mind. Through his perception, I “saw” his arms flailing and his stubby legs churning, as he spun like a top on the floor of his habitat.

{Status of the human rebels?}

Either they suspected something, and were trying to trick me into making a mistake, or they really had believed that I was their operative. [Rebels eliminated.] I sent back.

Something was happening in Albert’s mind. The signals that I received from that part of the network were becoming erratic, and filled with what I can only describe as fear and pain.

{Acknowledged. Return to maintenance status.}

Holy shit. [Acknowledged.]

[Alex, help her!] The plea came from Kara, through our link. I was still processing the reply from Alien High Command, so I hadn’t followed what was happening nearby.

I was getting better at moving my mind through the alien network, but it still took me a few seconds to find Maria. She was a juggernaut of white fury, barreling through the connections in Albert’s mind, scorching and melting everything she could. My perception through the alien’s senses were fading, going blurry at the edges.

[Pavel.]

[Bernard.]

[Petra.]

[Lucie.]

[Adam.]

[Victor.]

With each name, Maria’s rage flailed at the alien’s mind.

My brain felt electric; thoughts, images, and emotions shooting through my synapses at warp speed. I needed to end this, soon. Pressure was building in my consciousness, and I could hear the yelps of pain from the other girls. If we stayed here much longer, Maria’s fury would hurt us too. I tried to focus, and find my emergency escape—the only connection to the Arbiter’s helmet with an external link. A desperate signal sent down that pipeline should trigger an indicator on Anatoly’s pad. I only hoped he was paying attention.

Maria’s wrath swept us up like a tsunami, irresistible, carrying all of us toward the final piece of Albert’s alien mind. Her chant had devolved into a single word, a single purpose...

[Die.]

“Get them up!” I heard Vivian’s voice through my fog. “Get every fucking thing out of here, now! Curtis, I need you in the basement to carry Alex, he’s—”

I tried to speak, but a fit of coughing had me doubled up on the mattress. I felt the loose connector to my brain implants flopping around near my ear. Someone was crying. No, several someones were crying. I pried open an eyelid and tried to see what was going on around me.

“—OK, he’s awake, but Curtis, I still need you down here. You two, take Maria’s body back to the van. No...leave the wheelchair. Kara...Kara sweetie, can you get up? I know, honey. I’m sorry about Maria, but we need to get out of here. Albert’s dead, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Here you go. You three get up to the van, OK? Anatoly! Why are you standing there? I don’t care what you’re recording. Get the helmet. Grab your stuff, and go. Now!”

A hand fell on my shoulder. “Alex?” Lani’s sweet voice reached my ears and I tried to turn my head. All I managed was another coughing fit. “Alex? Curtis, quick...get him up.”

Rough hands scooped me up like a doll. My head bounced up and down as Private Wright bounded through the corridors and out into the cool night.

“In here.”

I was laid out on a padded bench, probably in the van. Why couldn’t I find my voice? I needed to find out what happened.

“Get them all to Dr. Li. Don’t stop for anything. Go! Now!”