The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Aces and Eights

Chapter 1 — Honor in Dishonor?

The drone guards went through the 8th Circle. At one time, these too had been prisoners, condemned to the 6th Circle for their crimes, but they had been punished and broken to pieces for what they had done; now they were tools of the same punishment. If they had still had their wills, though, they would be disgusted at the acts committed by these prisoners. The 8th Circle was, to many, home of the worst of the worst, those who preyed on the most innocent of innocents. Though their crimes were of a smaller scale than the traitors and war-mongers of the 9th Circle, they were more repugnant to any human being with any scrap of a soul.

Even those who could barely think beyond set, rigid patterns found satisfaction in performing their tasks in that place. They checked the pulses of those sprawled out on the floor, kicking the living and carrying the dead to the wheeled dumpsters pushed about by their fellow drones. The screams and pleas from those affected by their own control fell on deaf ears. Methodically, the guards moved through the circle, cutting down those who had hanged themselves and scooping up those who had simply given up. When the dumpsters were full, the guards brought the bodies to the fire pit to be disposed of, closing dark chapters never to be revisited and ensuring that the greatest of evil would never walk the earth again.

“Dead,” a man in the black suit of a guard said as he picked up an old man and tossed him over his shoulder. “Six days. The Labyrinth thanks you for your courtesy.” There might have been a hint of amusement in the man’s words.

A woman in a black skirtsuit took a picture of the dead man’s face and moved on to the next corpse. One by one, the bodies were incinerated, and never thought of again.

At the end of her shift, the female guard brought the memory card from her camera to her supervisor in his white lab coat. “Good,” he said, and he sent the appropriate messages to those who needed to know that justice had been done. The control community could move on, and that was all that mattered.

General Marion looked over his headquarters and smiled. Since the reformation of Elite 1, the community had taken notice, and the Men of Wealth and Taste were once again the feared and respected enforcers of the rules that they had once been. Reports were doubling, and he was a major part of it. His father and his brother would be proud—but they would be even prouder of Claudia, who had more moxie and will than both of them put together.

A young woman in a crisp pantsuit passed him and whispered, “Room 5, sir,” without breaking stride. The general’s face turned serious as he considered what that meant. A message waiting in room 5, and one whose existence could not even be publicly acknowledged, was never a good sign. He strode to the elevator and punched in the code that would allow him to access that level, then the next code when the elevator opened, then the next at the blast doors of the small chamber, then the last at the computer. A message appeared on his screen in code, but a few keystrokes granted him access of a level that only the highest-ranking officials of the organization had.

As he looked at the picture intercepted from the 8th Circle’s database, he wished he didn’t have that opportunity. He knew the man’s face, but with shaking fingers, he opened up the internal database.

Confirmed match, the screen blinked at him. He read through the biographical information, biting the inside of his lip to keep from swearing loudly enough to be heard past the blast doors. Geoffrey Cleveland. Age 71. Class 3 registered. Affiliation Great Lakes University. No prior offenses. Second-in-command...

“No, no, no!” General Marion burst out, slamming the keyboard with both hands and blanking the screen. He leaned back in his chair and took a few deep breaths before he was able to regain his composure. Through the linkages in the system, he accessed the Mindcrime report.

Voluntary surrender, March 28th, 2011. Charges encrypted. None of General Marion’s codes could break the encryption, but he knew what caused someone to be thrown to the 8th Circle. Death report issued March 29th, 2011.

“Voluntary, my ass! Michaelsson knew!” He pounded the speakerphone. “All generals! Full classification, code 100!” he snapped, and waited impatiently as the screens in the room lit up with the faces of the other generals who were responsible for the Men of Wealth and Taste.

“Code 100, Bill?” a middle-aged woman said with some amusement.

“Geoffrey Cleveland was condemned to the 8th Circle last week. He only lasted six days down there, perhaps five, depending on the flight. An empty casket was buried the day after Mindcrime sent him down. The charges against him are encrypted with a code I can’t break. Michaelsson knew, and you know what that means, and what we have to do,” General Marion snapped. “I believe that merits a Code 100, Theresa.”

“A strike on Isaac Michaelsson? The greatest reformer, protector, and betterment controller known to man? I understand that our oath calls on us to destroy all controllers, but if there was one organization that would change that, it would be Great Lakes. You know the background better than I do. Fifty years, no incidents—yes, a sheltered community, but one that has produced better men and women than any other. Drugs? Gone in a month. Alcohol? Forgotten in a week. I hate to spew mantra, but ‘there is a moral high ground...’” Theresa Crawford said.

“It’s called Great Lakes University,” General Marion finished. “I know. Ted Baker, St. Joseph’s, Northern State, Central, Western, CU-Denver... and then there’s Great Lakes, working so hard to keep their message positive that they ship Augusta Burke out to St. Joseph’s. To me, that makes it worse. We know the inherent danger of the power given to a controller.”

“But he heard the 8th Circle accusation and Cleveland surrendered the next day, so...” another general cut in, his brow furrowed and his mustache twitching at the accusations.

“Michaelsson knew, and acted as judge, jury, and executioner. It also means that someone snitched to Mindcrime. You don’t earn your way to the 8th Circle in a day, or even a week. It’s a perversion of a lifetime. That’s why the first, last, and only universal rule that even the Class 6 groups follow is ‘pedophiles hang’. Mindcrime finds an 8th Circle offense in the heart of Great Lakes, at the right hand of the savior of the industry. It’s said that Michaelsson’s the one who got Horn on the straight and narrow, that he inspired Samuels, that he helped organize the defenses at Iowa. Michaelsson’s the proof that control can be used for betterment, and that he only uses control for betterment. And then his right-hand man goes to the 8th Circle and it’s over, done with, buried in a day and dead in a week in the heart of the Labyrinth? It’s too pat. Too simple. Too well-planned. We are not controllers and we are not the controlled. We have to see beyond the surface.”

“This will bring us back to the pariah days,” Theresa warned.

“If fulfilling our mission means being a pariah, I’ll take it. Isn’t it our job to be the questioners of the controllers? Aren’t we better than being brainwashed than the brainwashed? I don’t know what Michaelsson had his eye on, but—”

“It wasn’t fucking kids or he would have been dead fifty years ago!” the mustached man interrupted. At the edge of the screen, his hand reached for the phone, but he pulled back.

“And it wasn’t protection, betterment, honor, virtue...”

“Toward the ultimate success of the world. I grant your point. Use Elite 1 for your investigation,” the mustached man agreed, his voice low and angry.

“Matthew, I—” General Marion stopped, seeing the look on the man’s face. “This is a dead man’s hand, General Collins, fellow generals, my friends. There is no way we can win here. Aces and eights, the greatest controllers in the world and the sickening offense they had under the rug. You know the structure. The only people Michaelsson betters more than laypeople are the controllers underneath him. We have to go stealth. We have to go need-to-know. Elite 1 will be our drawing pool, but we only activate all of them if we need to strike.”

“Would this not be pulling out the keystone? I remind you that there is a growing power vacuum in Michigan, filled only by Great Lakes, a place so powerful that the drone squads of the doll factories omit its presence from their maps so as to avoid trespassing. Can you imagine the hell you would create if you merely expose them? The center cannot hold. Was justice not done?”

“General Chen, I acknowledge your point and accept your judgment. You’ve been accurate ever since you opposed the Dallas strike. I understand what a strike against Great Lakes would entail. But how do we know that Cleveland acted alone? How do we know this was not a sacrifice? Worst of all, how do we know this was not a culture hidden for fifty years? For all I know, it could have been a cycle scam where Cleveland created the pain and Michaelsson ended it when they reached college!”

“Preposterous, yet plausible, and that is the worst thing about the enemies we face. You are correct in keeping it stealth. The community will rebel if it’s known that we are targeting Michaelsson. I would actually worry less if you went after some of his disciples. Michaelsson is ninety-five years old and has been using his power at its peak for close to seventy years, a period long enough to make me wonder at the accuracy of the legends. Too, he is one of those who believes that controllers are born, not made, and has tried to reform natural controllers more than anything else. The weapons at his disposal are quite potent. Within the community, he is all but worshipped. His chains around Great Lakes are strong, like a cage holding in his little birds, and at least according to their procedure, he only lets them free when their song would bring light, not darkness, to the world. But he was born a Dane, and he should have known when something was rotten far earlier. We need an unprejudiced observer, and we need swift action. If he is using control to excuse a hive, then he is simply another vampire, but in a clean castle.”

The speakers crackled at the gasps from some of the other generals. It took strong action indeed for someone like George Chen to dare tie a legend like Isaac Michaelsson to the amorality of those born with strangely compelling eyes, to equate one of the great reformers of the world to someone who could fry a brain before saying a word and never lived their life without a slave doting at their side. But the evidence was there in the corpse of Geoffrey Cleveland, and as slight as it was, Chen seemed convinced, which in turn convinced some of the others.

“Cleveland was his right-hand man—literally, for many of his days. He was the hammer, the Hand of God... and the reason I tremble at this report, his recruiter. The truth... we’ll never know the full truth with Cleveland dead, but enough has been revealed that we need to dig deeper and see if we’ve been trapped in a lie a half-century old spun by another power-happy vampire,” Collins said before breaking down in tears.

“Rachel’s law. A victim is never a controller, even one that employs control. You know that better than anyone. Besides, I know the hoodlum you were, and the righteous and just man you are now, one who restored order to what was becoming a collection of contract killers. Michaelsson’s belief that a layman’s militia is an important check on controllers’ power, that they must understand there are consequences to their actions, is one of the core tenets of our organization thanks to you. I’m not the first or the last to say that there’s no finer general in the corps than Matthew Collins. I assure you, we will leave no stone unturned before deciding to act,” General Marion said reassuringly.

“If one’s life is unsalted, the hollowness will ring so deafening that there was never any success to begin with, so one’s life must be seasoned with the highest of honor and no harm to any fellow man,” Collins quoted. “You know the structure. You’ll be dealing with upwards of seventy-five controllers, ranging in age and skill, but all devoted to Michaelsson’s beliefs. The stadium is a fortress, a true vampire’s castle, complete with a hundred-yard Astroturf altar for proper worship. I am defending Michaelsson here. I am defending him by ensuring that his words were the truth, and living by them as he intended me to, even if he never did.”

The words echoed in the small room, and one by one the generals signed off. Collins was the last, and he spoke before General Marion had a chance to disconnect himself. “General Marion... Bill... if the truth is that it was a lie, and the lie is that it was the truth, burn him alive like the scum he is,” he said, voice thick with emotion.

Instead of motivating General Marion, though, it only made him more determined to keep the full scope of this secret for as long as he could.

“I feel like I should be hiding in a trash can! Why are we watching ten-year-olds play football?” Rhonda complained as she sat next to Claudia on another petty mission, this one in San Diego.

“I hope it’s not what I fear,” Claudia replied with her bravest face on.

“What, the coach? Well, she didn’t wink at Rhonda and she didn’t look twice at my ass, but... nah, she just thinks she’s Bill Parcells out there. I mean, using a coach’s headset in a pee-wee game? And is that a four-picture play card? Nah, she’s Class 1 at worst, and her husband the football junkie’s more likely to be in control,” Brenna assessed.

“Oscar the Grouch, Sparky the Fire Dog, a Zord, Speed Racer... wouldn’t wanna be the quarterback’s folks right about now. May wanna look away... ooof, too late. Sorry, thought she was calling a safety blitz,” Cynthia said with alarm. “So she’s a crazy football fanatic.”

“That’s just Coach Jacoby. She’s great with the kids, but yeah, she thinks they’re the Chargers, though she thinks their coach is a moron,” the quarterback’s mother said, checking to make sure her son didn’t need to be extracted from the turf.

“She’s great with the kids, gets them playing the right way younger than any other coach I’ve seen. She’s a little crazy, but she knows her shit—me, I think she’s better than Norv. If she wasn’t a woman and already working a Fortune 500 job, she’d be coaching at the high school,” the father added.

Cynthia frowned and tugged on Claudia’s sleeve. “Wait, I know that name. Jacoby? She’s all over the green pages. Completely harmless unless your kid’s the opposing quarterback. Claudia, what the hell are we doing here? Did you fuck up and not tell us? A Class 1 housewife and her football team—before that it was the Class 2 coach in Detroit who’s engaged to his captain, and before that it was the lunatic Reed refugee at Northern State, and last week it was a nobody high school kid who couldn’t even put a cheerleader to sleep? The last I checked, we’re Elite 1, but we seem to be doing mop-up duty!” she said in a low, angry hiss.

“Just us two, now,” Claudia replied sharply, and Cynthia followed her to the bathroom. “Not about to admit this in front of the rest of the team, but I don’t know what’s going on either. It’s part of an investigation, and I think it’s something big, but even when I play the niece card the general won’t tell me anything else. I’ll give you what I know and what I’ve guessed. I think someone’s looking for breadcrumbs, and I don’t like where they lead. The kid was over a withdrawn college application, the Northern State band director was worried about what they saw on road trips, the Wheels were up in arms over some Yoopers...”

Cynthia let out a small gasp. “I worked guidance. I see where this is going. I don’t know what the whole story is yet, but I’m real sorry for snapping at you. This conversation never happened. If we end up goin’ up there, don’t start the mission without me briefing you first. And if this is headin’ the way it looks like it’s headin’, I don’t want to know what you need to ask Jacoby.”

“I wish someone would tell me what they know,” Claudia said with more than a hint of frustration.

Cynthia shook her head. “Don’t want to be wrong. Some names you don’t say unless you want that attention. But we’d better get back with the rest of the team before Rhonda starts getting ideas. Go do what you have to do.”

Claudia glared at Cynthia, but when it was clear Cynthia wasn’t giving up the information, she backed off and went to meet Jennifer Jacoby. There might have been a residual snap in her voice when she said, “Pleased to meet you, Jennifer, hope you guessed my name.”

Jennifer turned white with fear. “No! Get lost! If you lay a hand on him, I swear to God I’m ripping it off at the wrist and choking you with it! I loved him before the football!”

“Relax, it’s about your team. I get that a lot, though, but not usually as violently.”

“My team? Who was spreading rumors? Sexist pigs! A soccer mom is cute, a hockey mom is great, but a mom who coaches football is some kind of freakish monster!” Jennifer erupted.

“Nothing about you. Some charity was interested in your team?” Claudia asked.

“Ivan...” Jennifer’s mood darkened, which Claudia found to be an improvement; at least it was less hazardous to her health. “I had Thomas call him. He can turn my brain into one big football, stamp the NFL shield on it, and have the Duke sign it from beyond the grave, but I still have my women’s intuition. It was about six months ago. Two guys were in the stands. Matching colors, dark blue and bright gold—and I mean gold, not Charger yellow. I could spot them for controllers a mile away. They were... strangers with candy, if you know what I mean. Two things together that get your blood pressure up every time.”

“I hear that,” Claudia said.

“Ivan must have come to you,” Jennifer went on, making the idea sound distasteful. “I didn’t let any of the kids get near them. Took them out the back way. Not the first time I’ve seen either kind of trouble, but the first time I’ve seen them together. You guys hanged them, right? Good. They deserve it. The idea of someone with those skills using them on kids... ugh, makes me want to kill someone.”

“Did they have any name on their shirts?”

“Cleveland,” Jennifer said immediately. “Sticks out in my head because they were nowhere near Browns colors and the Chargers were on the road in Arizona that weekend. I didn’t look for anything else once I understood what kind of trouble they were.”

“Thank you for your time, Coach. I’ll leave you to the postgame celebration,” Claudia said, running off the field and past everyone, past even her team, in her hurry to get to the airport and back to base.

Cynthia caught up to her just outside the stadium. “Is it—”

“Great Lakes,” Claudia confirmed, never breaking stride, and Cynthia broke off to get the rest of the unit in order and try to explain what happened.

Now she had all the pieces. The colors, the locations, the college application, the rumors, the questions, the topics—she understood now why they were working in secret, why the true nature of their game had to be kept hidden, why everyone who seemed to know anything was being cagey with her. She knew, or at least she had begun to know, what she was up against, and she was barely up to it. But she wouldn’t be a Marion, and she wouldn’t be in charge of Elite 1, if she couldn’t at least try. That meant finding out what was really going on. She couldn’t go on with petty fact-finding missions any longer, not with what she suspected was going on. The stakes were too high.

She knew about Great Lakes. Growing up fighting for everything and not having the luxuries she saw on TV, she had thought a place like Great Lakes was the pinnacle; where else could you go from zero to everything in just four years? With what she knew now, she was sure that control was involved, but if an Eighth Circle offender was involved, that cracked everything she had once believed in. She couldn’t fathom the enormity of the situation, but that had to be why they’d spent the last two months going around the problem instead of directly at it. They needed evidence upon evidence upon evidence before they could dare go after the myth that was Great Lakes.

Her thoughts had consumed her travel, and she was back at the base before she knew it, with General Marion approaching her. She saluted, both out of respect and to warn him that she was in high gear. “I’d ask you the nature of your game, General, but I already know it,” she rapped out.

“You only know the cause of it, not the actual problem, and that’s why we sent you on petty little missions to gather the proof needed, and even the connections between those were supposed to be top secret. The good news is that you don’t have to commit an Eighth Circle strike. Cleveland is already dead, punished in the Eighth Circle by the controllers’ rules. The problem is that it was Geoffrey Cleveland. The problem is that his sentence was handed down single-handedly by Isaac Michaelsson. The problem is that, beyond one incident, we don’t know what happened, because Great Lakes burned the body and called it justice.”

“Isn’t that the code? Otherwise we end up with Salem all over again when the parents go into hysteria to protect their children,” Claudia pointed out.

“That’s the code, but not for the reason you’re thinking. It’s to prevent that scum weaseling their way out of it in a normal court with their power. It’s supposed to keep anyone with those intentions from getting that kind of power in the first place, but in this case we believe the system failed, and the code was used against the community to prevent the extent of the offense from being known. That’s why we got involved. At best, Michaelsson abused his power and authority within the Castle, and if that’s the case, then we have to ask them to look at other cases.”

“Playing devil’s advocate here, sir, but if the charge was filed by a rival protection agency like Spiral I—a rival in more than one sphere—he’s within his rights to defend one of his people,” Claudia said.

“The Castle, or Michaelsson using his position in the Castle, exacted uncoerced surrender before Mindcrime could act. Since the offender then caught a bad case of dead, Mindcrime is content. In their mind, the monster is dead and the community reacted promptly within their rules, so they’re allowed to go about their business. Believe me, if this had just been a simple game of Hang the Molester, we would have had a strike team in and out the same day. We have our own staff to find and kill the ones stalking kids almost before they ever act, and they’d beat Brenna on the range. Drive-bys, gas leaks, bombs, whatever’s necessary and on to the next one before there even is a problem, because with this, one problem is one too many. But this is about one person—a victim by definition, no less—catching him and a henchman looking for prey and reporting it to Mindcrime—next thing you know, he’s guilty, no trial, no judgment—”

“No knowledge,” Claudia said, recognizing what was going on.

“We’ve let Michaelsson have his little Stepford since right after our founding, and he hasn’t let us down. Great Lakes was one of the few places where we could say that yes, mind controllers can be decent human beings, and have morals, and use their powers for good. And we watched them like hawks in the very beginning. But instead of doing everything we feared they could, they championed racial integration, kept their cult-like status to the bare minimum, never taught control to those who weren’t already controllers, and forced controllers to live by the rules. Michaelsson published books on the ethics of control, helped write most of the laws and rules Mindcrime goes by, and either explained or judged nine of the ten most important cases in the Castle’s history. He was the man who defended us when the Dallas strike on Three Sisters went awry, arguing that the evil of Three Sisters justified our actions. As much as any of us can say a controller is a good man, he’s a good man. Or so we thought.”

“So you’re going rogue? Can I even defend this to the other members of my unit? Can you even justify it to the upper brass?” Claudia asked.

“This mission has been approved. They get it. It was heated, but my fellow generals understood that this is not one skeleton we’re talking about—and if it is, then that’s all the better for Great Lakes. Our nature is to question any controller, and Michaelsson isn’t exempt. He’s hiding something, and if he’s hiding things just so his system is upheld... now you know why I had you interviewing Cline and asking about suspicious behavior up there.”

“It’s just a cult... a cult that’s had almost a million people go through its doors and trained hundreds and thousands of controllers?”

General Marion nodded, his lips thin. “If the controller in charge isn’t better, then there can be no betterment. Instead, it’s just slavery in the name of a good name that doesn’t exist. Some of us hoped and believed in the greatness of Michaelsson—that betterment through control could be achieved, even on a large scale, without amorality or selfish means. This action proves otherwise, and it all goes downhill from there. From what was once good comes evil, and worse than evil. If control for betterment conforms to an agenda that is not truly noble, there is no honor and no betterment. With no honor can only come evil worse than ever seen before, and thus becomes history.”

“You’re quoting him, aren’t you? It sounds a little like Great Lakes. When Wanda and I were both looking at colleges, we were looking at Great Lakes, but Grandpa talked mom out of it by bringing up the out-of-state tuition... he wasn’t being cheap, was he?”

“He believed that no good could ever come of warping a mind. Good or evil, any free thought was better than a forced vision of good. He wanted all controllers dead and even fought with Kerr himself over Michaelsson. But in those days we had far worse to deal with and far fewer resources, so we went after the snakes we could see and let Michaelsson ride. And he respected us in turn. He had more than one alum join us to go against controllers, former victims or sons of former victims. It brought order and structure here after Kerr died. Before that, we were devolving into contract killers and brute force extermination forces.” General Marion’s tight expression turned into an equally tight smile. “The beauty of Michaelsson’s approach is that his lessons stuck, and stuck so thoroughly that even when he cuts his people loose they stick. If anything, a perversion of this proportion has them up in arms even more than us.”

“Yay, I guess. So the truth is that we don’t know what the truth is. For all we know, it could be a camp for Eighth Circle perverts.”

“Probably not. But the fact that we can’t be certain is why we have to do this. It’s probably going to involve a strike on a ninety-five-year-old man who the community flocks to for moral guidance. What we’re telling controllers if we do this is that there are no morals in control, and there’s no point to trying to have morals in control. What we’ll have is Russia. That’s part of why I had you visit Sanderson at Northern State. She tried to make a back-channel complaint to Mindcrime too, apparently, but they couldn’t base an investigation off her word,” General Marion said.

“What they did would pale in comparison... shit, sir, I understand all the small missions now. You had to prepare us for the extent of it. It’s too much, but it’s exactly what it has to be, and we’ll be on the first plane to the UP.”

“Good. So I don’t have to tell you that without Great Lakes, the state of Michigan will likely become no man’s land for anyone who wants to keep a brain in their head. Or that the few ties we have to the control community will likely be severed for good. But we have to take those risks. We’re not about kid gloves here. We leave negotiations to Mindcrime and other groups. We’re about making sure nothing goes past the point of destruction, and if Michaelsson crossed that line, he has to be dealt with like any other controller. You have your orders.” General Marion hesitated, then offered one last bit of advice. “Don’t get caught alone. No one knows how many controllers he has.”

“So when you ran out of there like a bat out of hell, I assumed you’d figured out what the flyin’ fuck was goin’ on. Cynthia wouldn’t tell us. You gonna leave us in the dark too?” Brenna asked coldly.

“Great Lakes sprung a leak. Jacoby caught it. We just need to make sure it’s not a flood,” Claudia replied.

“Great Lakes is a city unto itself in the woods. We get orders to go against a dual-nature camp that uses control to better the underserved and teach controllers ethical practice, there’s more than just stickin’ our fingers in the dike, you should pardon the expression, Rhonda,” Cynthia said, glaring at Claudia.

“Might be. Might not be. It’s not the act in question but the acts before and after that concern us,” Claudia said.

“So we’re trying to figure out if Great Lakes is a human Ponzi scheme? Come in half as good, come out twice as better, and no one knows where the better came from or what had to be sacrificed to get there?” Rhonda asked. Everyone looked at her. “God damn it, I’m tired of you all looking at me like I’m an idiot. They let a lot of stupid men in the Marines. They don’t let many stupid women in the Marines.”

“Don’t hardly matter what Great Lakes is. Only good controller is a dead controller,” Brenna said.

“We won’t find anything. But we have to make sure we don’t. Michaelsson is older than the pope, and the pope was too old to act...” Gianna said, shaking her head.

“They keep enough controllers that I’m not surprised one was doing fucked up shit on the side. Old man can’t keep his eyes open forever. Let’s see what other businesses opened up,” Cheryl said. “We’re leaving immediately? Thought so. Where’s my charger?”