The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A Day in the Life

I stared into the spiral. It didn’t turn so much as swim before my eyes, in a way that slipped right past my retinas and went right to the part of the brain that gave me a headache. I kept looking into it for what seemed like forever. Finally, words appeared in front of—behind?—the spiral: ‘You love Doctor Martin’.

Right, that was it. Finally. I casually kicked the computer’s power off and rubbed my aching eyes. “Yup, you’ve got subliminals.”

The crowd around me—well, mostly in front of me, since no one had placed themselves with a clear view of the monitor—gave a collective sigh. “Who from?” asked Silver Shield, the leader.

I gave him a look. “You heard Thunderstrike ranting about his ‘true love’. Who do you think? It’s Martin, obviously.”

“Right. All right then, guys, lets suit up and —”

I kept the look going. “Gimme a chance to finish the job peaceably, here? That’s what you keep me on staff for.”

“Oh. Um, right.”

I stood up and pulled out my cell. Everyone else took a step back like it was a live grenade, even the ones that probably could have eaten live grenades. I gave another sigh. “I’ll be in conference room B, OK? Don’t touch anything until I get back.”

Once inside the conference room I started going through my address book. My job has garnered me probably the most thorough list of contacts in the business, which is nothing resembling a good thing for me. It’s occasionally useful, as right then, but really most of these people I wouldn’t talk to if you paid me. Well, I was being paid, so I guess I got to put that to the test. My life, ladies and gentlemen.

Here we went. Dr Franz Martin. I rang the number and was greeted with an earful of white noise and the words “You trust Doctor Martin. You want to help Doctor Martin. You —”

“Franz, you jackass, turn that off!” It turned off.

“Sorry, Laura,” said Martin, sounding genuinely apologetic. “It’s grant season. I didn’t realize it was you calling.”

“Sure you didn’t. You know perfectly well I was going to call when they found your subliminal crap.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Did it... did it work?”

He couldn’t see me but I rolled my eyes anyways. “Yes, it ‘worked’. You whammied the hell out of Thunderstrike. How do we get it off the machine?”

“Thunder... that’s... wait, who?”

“Thunderstrike? Tall guy, handsome, red hair, lightning powers? I didn’t figure you for the —”

“Shit, it wasn’t supposed to be him!” Called that one. “It was supposed to be... erm... um...”

“Starlight, yeah, we’ve been through this before. How do we get rid of it?”

“Um, its just in the boot script. Look, did it really get a guy? Because I didn’t think it would work on a —”

“Yeah, it got him good, congratulations.” I should really have hung up then, but for some reason I kept going. “Look, Franz, you somehow managed to get this thing installed inside Base Camp, and then fucked it up because you apparently can’t tell the desk of a 27-year old woman from the desk of a 19-year old man. Why are you going through all this crap?”

“Well... so I can get her to —”

“You’re not sixteen, Franz. Just man up and ask her out like a normal human being.”

“I’m an expert in subliminal mind-control, she’d never want to be with me.”

Had everyone in this city’s brains melted except mine? (Possibly.) “Are you kidding? Everyone and their kid brother is dating over the fence these days. Nobody would care.”

“I don’t know...”

“Look, just go give her a ring the old fashioned way. It will work out. I promise.”

“Well, maybe...”

“Good.” I hung up. I wish I could say all that was out of a desire to help the guy, but mainly it was just in the hopes that he’d stop doing stuff that would necessitate me getting involved. The fewer emotionally-frustrated supervillains out there, the more time I have for not-dealing-with-emotionally-frustrated-supervillains.

I headed back into the main office, to expectant looks. “Yeah, we’re good. It’s just in the boot script, Ghost; dig it out of there and you’ll be fine.”

The tech guy gave a hesitant nod and rebooted the computer with ostentatious caution. Silver Shield smiled at me. “Well, thank you again, Ms Munroe —”

“You’re welcome. I think I’m done here for today. Anything else? You still conscious over there, Ghost? Good.” I pulled on my jacket and made for the exit.

As I passed the other conference room on the way out, I could hear Mindwipe—team psychic and psychologist—inside, trying to deprogram poor Thunderstrike. “Look, Tom, you’re a guy. You’re attracted to girls. You can’t be in love with Doctor Martin.”

“Sure I can. I never took you to be a homophobe, Mary.” Insulted sniff.

“I am gay! It’s just that you’re not.”

“You know as well as I do that your sexual preferences aren’t fixed over time.”

“Your last psych screen was on Tuesday!”

I sighed and left.

* * *

I discovered my for-lack-of-a-better-term superpower three years ago, when I moved to River City, two days before that thing with the Star Spawn of In’khal’got. Yes, that was me. No, you don’t need to thank me. Nobody ever does anyway. In a way, I suppose it was a perfect introduction to the way my life was going to go from then on.

So, Star Spawn of In’khal’got. Giant squid from outside of space and time pops from wherever into Rosecrans Park, starts splattering passersby with its disgusting octopodal babies. Everyone else got what by common consent is described as ‘the most relaxed, comfortable vacation I’ve ever had’. I got a face full of horrible little suckers and a splitting migraine. I ended up having to beat a Lovecraftian monstrosity to death with a shovel just to make the pain stop, while two hundred people watched, unmoving and blissed out.

That’s not the worst part, of course. No, the worst part was the way everyone kept giving me disappointed looks once the ugly things died and fell off, like maybe I couldn’t have let them stay on their stupid octopus trip just a little longer. The thing had already eaten nineteen people by the time I got to it; so no, I couldn’t have waited.

And that was my introduction to the wonderful world of superherohood. Not that I really realized it at the time. I, and everyone else, figured I’d just lucked out into a freak immunity to squid-based psionics. It happens. But then there was the whole mess with the ‘Bimbofication Ray’, and I came through that fine too, which is when the professionals got involved. Three weeks of in retrospect insanely hazardous testing later, and it became obvious that my immunity to mind-alteration was pretty damn comprehensive.

Psychic powers don’t work on me; I get a headache instead. Hypnosis just doesn’t take. Subliminals, like Martin’s stuff, come across decidedly superliminal. My immune system fights off nanites like nobody’s business, which is fine, but did you know that most disease symptoms are your own body’s defensive measures? The result is things like asymptomatic-in-everyone-else nanites giving me convulsions and a fever of 40° C (and of course, I got to be fully lucid for every agonizing second of it). Mind-affecting drugs interact with my biochemistry in ways that Dr Henderson over at the University claimed were ‘chemically impossible’, which sounds interesting until you realize that this covers, e.g., alcohol. I’ve needed a drink for three years.

Sentient memes are the worst. Well, no, the alcohol thing is the worst, but the memes are the most obnoxious. Nothing against memes—some of my best friends are sentient memes—but most people don’t realize that ‘sentient’ doesn’t exactly entail ‘smart’. Once they see you’re not going to pick them up, you’d figure they’d just let it rest, but instead most of them just throw subtlety out the window. There’s nothing like having a conversation which suddenly degenerates into “the rose-blue island is the blade! It follows the seventeen and the grey!” You wouldn’t think you’d need superpowers to ignore that, but apparently neurotypicals eat that stuff up with a spoon. Who knows.

All this, while nice, is just about the worst excuse for a grade-A superpower imaginable, as I’m sure you’ll agree. And honestly, any other place on Earth, it probably would have been. But I lived in River City, which as it turns out is the global capital for mind control and associated arts and crafts, and so my little talent got me a full-time job as an emergency fixer. As noted above, this usually entails getting elbow-deep in other peoples’ messes, and let me tell you, a guy suddenly developing a gay crush on a man I don’t think he’s ever actually met in person is on the decidedly pleasant side of the things I have to deal with.

* * *

Case in point: I came home to my apartment to discover a thrall kneeling blankly in front of my door. “Phil?” I said, confused. Last I’d checked he wasn’t a zombie.

The lights came back on in his eyes and he gave me a relieved-edging-on-desperate look. “Oh, thank God you’re here, Laura, she told me to come here if something went wrong and oh God it has, Laura, I need you to get her back —”

“Heya, calm down there, Phil.” He instantly slid back into emptiness, which I suppose was technically the creepiest thing I’d seen so far today. The day was still young: it was so far down my all-time list it barely even registered. “Come on inside. I’ll get you some lunch.” I have no idea whether he’d eaten already or not, but from his state I was guessing probably no. Phil stood and followed me inside noiselessly. I got him seated at the table and nuked him a slice of pizza. Phil didn’t even watch, just stared at the wall opposite him. I thought through what I was going to say.

“OK, Phil, in a minute you’re going to wake back up. When you do, you’re going to be full conscious but calm: you were sent here for a reason, because I can help you, and you know that by being here everything is working out according to plan. OK?” I’m not exactly one for the brainwashed slave thing myself, but after three years of dealing with panicky, desperate slaves—and in my experience, by the time I need to get involved, there’s pretty much no other kind of slave but the panicky and the catatonic—you pick up a few things.

The microwave dinged and Phil blinked. (Thralldom’s got to be pretty hard on your corneas, now that I think about it.) I got him the pizza and he took it with gratitude. “Thanks, Laura. It’s so good of you to help us.”

“It’s...” I give up on having my afternoon off. “...not a problem. Just tell me what’s wrong. What’s happened?” I had a pretty good idea, given Phil’s state before, but I might as well get the whole story.

“Rachel. Someone kidnapped her.” Right in one.

I’d known Rachel and Philip back from my high school days, back when we were all living down east. They’d been in love then; still were now, I suppose, for a decidedly less vanilla value of love than ‘high school sweethearts’. He’d gotten a job for some computers firm out here in River City and they’d moved about a year before I did; at which point Rachel had apparently fallen ass-backwards into a sophisticated suite of seduction-based powers. This is what passes for fairness in my life.

In half-hearted defense of whatever sadistic bastard upstairs is in charge of allocating these things, Rachel had done a decent job with a power-set that all-but screamed ‘black hat’. She’d mostly stuck making herself and Phil happy, apparently. Well, that and getting a big crowd of total strangers together to help move me into my apartment back in the day, for which I steadfastly refuse to fault her.

So helping out it was. Besides, there are plenty of possible results of being kidnapped in River City, and none of them end prettily. I wasn’t going to let that happen to a friend of mine, regardless of her unfair luck in the superpowers lottery.

“All right, Phil,” I said, when I realized I’d been woolgathering. Phil was still calmly eating his pizza. “So tell me what happened.”

They’d been going out for an anniversary dinner last night. While en route to the nightclub (a ridiculously upscale place called Empire State, which I’d been in only once—I’d gotten in that time because I was in Rachel’s company, of course), they’d been accosted. A man had walked up to her and said ‘you’re coming with me. Keep quiet’. Rachel had promptly walked off with him, which is where Phil decided, and I agreed, he had some kind of mind control power. Phil had trailed them to a house a little ways out of downtown, assisted by Rachel’s occasional frantic glance at him over the shoulder. Useful hint that: apparently he’s got mind-control, but only enough to make people do things, not totally repress a personality. Not that either version would take on me, but it would be a help for getting Rachel back to normal once this was all dealt with. (Plus the headache from the latter is way worse than the former.) Anyhow, Phil had found the place but there’d been a guard there who’d turfed him off, at which point he’d started to panic and fallen back on the backup plan Rachel had carefully embedded in him, which involved walking to my place, overnight. Apparently he’d hiked all the way out to here on foot, then waited at the door for me to get back from my job this morning.

“Jesus,” I said, and started making him another cup of coffee. He probably needed it. I’d kicked the habit, presumably cold turkey, three years ago, but I still keep the stuff on hand. I like the taste, and it gives me a sense of normalcy, for less money than wasting otherwise good alcohol. “That’s one poorly planned contingency. What if I’d been out of town? What if you’d been out of town?”

“It worked out,” said Phil, calmly. Smug bastard. “Rachel knew what she was doing.”

I wanted to yell at him—there was so much that could have gone messily wrong with this plan—but he was right: I was the best choice for dealing with this crap, as much as it makes my life one endless chain of stress. And in any case it wouldn’t have taken: Phil was more-or-less constitutionally incapable of thinking ill of Rachel; had been for almost as long as I knew them, since well back before she’d gotten powers. Lucky girl. “Fine, you’re right.”

“I know,” he said, and took a placid sip from his mug. “So what’s the plan?”

“I’m going to make a call and get some stuff together. Once it’s ready, we’re going to head over there, kick some faces in, and get Rachel back.”

Phil smiled. “I told you she knew what she was doing.”

I headed into my bedroom to make the call in private. The woman I was calling was Claire Sumner, a friend and subcontractor of sorts. She was always cheery and helpful, and pleasant to talk to as long as you were willing to deal with an endless gushy stream of ‘really cool things’ she’d just heard about. She also had a superpower—sort of—and was always willing to help me out on business, even though every time I called her in it was under the table, as now. I’d have felt more guilty dragging her through these messes if I’d met a single person willing to hurt her after five minutes conversation. Sometimes friendliness is its own reward, I guess.

She picked up on the first ring. “Laura? Oh, awesome! It’s so good to hear from you again! You’ll never guess this really cool thing I heard just recently...” And she’s off. I let her ramble for a little while before she hit what seemed like a logical break and got around to the point of the call.

“I need your help with something, Claire.”

“Of course, Laura,” she said, seriously. Sometimes I love her. “What have you got?”

“House at 231 Sheridan East. There’s a guard at the door and I need in. She’s probably brainwashed, too, so be careful.”

“When am I not careful?” she asked, cheerfully. “Say, speaking of careful, I heard this really cool thing the other day...”

I managed to get off the phone a few minutes later, having extracted a promise that she’d call me back when she was done with the guard. Then it was off to pack. My power doesn’t give me anything in the way of physical advantage, and I didn’t know how many guards beyond the first there were. So I got my fibramic shirt on, and my jacket to cover that up, and then stuffed the jacket’s pockets with my taser, and a can of mace, and a set of handcuffs, and the cell with the panic button. After a moment’s thought about our boy’s apparent skill-set—namely, talking—I grabbed a ball-gag as well. And yeah, no, I wish. It’s as much a business expense as the ballistic shirt. (And on second thought there’s probably someone with powers out there who uses bulletproof clothing as a sex toy, but I really don’t want to meet them.)

“I thought your power was supposed to keep you safe,” said Phil, when I came back from the bedroom.

“It keeps my brains safe. My body is what all this is for.”

“Fair enough.”

“With any luck I won’t need it.” Which was followed by an awkward pause as we waited for Claire to call back. Finally the phone rang. “You OK, Claire?”

“What?” said Dr Franz Martin. Oh, I did not need this right now.

“I’m expecting someone else.”

“Are you sure about this thing? She’s not going to say yes, she’s going to punch me through a wall.”

Great job picking up on hints, there. “She doesn’t have super-strength. She’s not going to punch you through anything.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. She’s not going to do anything to you. Just go do it, damnit.” The sooner he did, the sooner I never had to sit through another of his stupid half-hour audio-visual presentations ever again. Half of them was always just making sure the target didn’t look away, which was probably necessary but got boring to investigate really fast.

“...All right,” he said, and I hung up on him again. After that, going to rescue Rachel from some sinister psychic started to look pretty straightforward. Phil gave me an inquisitive look but I stared him down.

There was another long wait. Finally the phone rang again. “Claire?”

“Yeah? You expecting somebody else?” Teasingly.

“No, just—are you OK?”

“Yes, everything’s fine.” I could hear her car engine running in the background, so presumably she wasn’t trapped in the house. “Alicia was no problem, just a little uptight about me not going in.”

“Alicia...? You got the guard’s name?”

“Hardly polite to stop and chat and not introduce yourself.”

“That wasn’t the... I... OK, fine. You do it your way. You sure it took?”

I could all but hear her rolling her eyes. “Yes, Laura. It’s not like this is my schtick, or anything. We’re good over here. Say, on my way over here I heard this really cool thing...”

“All right,” I said to Phil when Claire finally let me off the phone. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

We pulled up about a block from the house. I rummaged a pair of big ear-enveloping headphones out of the trunk: leftovers from a mess with a particularly nasty memetic serial-killer the previous winter. You wouldn’t remember it, by definition. As it turns out, you can kill an idea; you just need a lot of voice-cancellation technology and some weapons-grade psychic coercion. I handed the headphones to Phil, in the driver’s seat. “OK, put these on. Don’t take them off for anyone but me. Anyone comes out of the house, drive off and get real help: River City Defenders or somebody. I’m in the house longer than half an hour—drive off and get real help. You see the guy who grabbed Rachel doing anything whatsoever—drive off and get real help. Understood?”

“Yeah, I got it.” He put the headphones on. “I don’t see why you’re worried, though. Rachel has confidence in you. You’ll get her out.” He smiled that confident smile again.

“We hope.”

Phil gave me a mock-confused look and said “What? I can’t hear you.”

I did my best not to smack him and said “that’s the point,” and then gave up and just gave him a big fake grin and a thumbs up. He grinned back, and then I turned away and started walking down Sheridan to number 231.

The guard—Alicia—was there, all right, pacing incessantly in front of the door, and she tensed up the moment I turned off the sidewalk towards the house. “Go away!” she said, loudly and angrily.

“That’s not very nice,” I said, keeping on walking. “I’m just here to talk to someone.”

“Seriously,” she said, and stood directly in front of the door. She suddenly seemed more nervous than anything, and it struck me she was young—some freshman track athlete, maybe. “You really don’t want to talk to him.”

“He’s really not much good at this mind-control thing, is he? I mean, most brainwashed slaves would be trying to sneak me inside so I could get recruited, at this point. Am I not good-looking enough for The Master? Is that it?”

Alicia’s eyes widened and she looked thoroughly miserable by now. Her body didn’t budge from the door. “Please, I can’t let you in.”

I relented a little. She wasn’t the villain in this piece, and I didn’t need to make her presumably already cold and unpleasant job out here any worse. At this point I was guessing she’d been picked up recently, just like Rachel. “I’m sorry. Let’s just talk. You hear anything really cool recently?”

Alicia perked up at that. “Actually, yeah, I heard this really cool thing just this morning where the blacklight terrace drinks the sender and you unlock the door just like this and under the epsilon four times with the snowbell and a sky and John is upstairs third door on your right and red aleph subsumes the lion.” She blinked in confusion at the now-open door in front of her.

“Thanks, Blacklight. And sorry about this, Alicia,” I said, and stepped through into the house.

What? I told you some of my best friends were sentient memes.

Blacklight is a good guy, as sentient memes go. It’s about as helpful and friendly as its gushy ‘I heard this really cool thing...’ vector suggests. Just like Claire, really. I don’t know whether it keeps coming back to her because of that, or if she’s like that because she hosts the thing all the time, or both, or neither; but it seems to like her, in its puppy-dog way, and she seems to like it (“It’s kinda cute, you know?”). I’m not going to mess around with a good thing, however weird it might be. Besides, every so often, as right then, they come in really handy.

I made a mental note to buy Claire a drink and find Blacklight a skydiver to have some ‘really cool thing’ experiences with, once this was all over. Meanwhile I looked around the house. Seemed fairly normal, which meant either our boy was new and hadn’t had time to get a proper evil lair yet, or that he just didn’t give a damn. Given what I knew of his modus operandi, namely grabbing someone off the street directly away from their husband, who was left entirely free to go get help, I leant towards the latter. Although I suppose there was no reason he couldn’t be both grass-green and incompetent.

At the top of the stairs, there were two more girls, both naked. They were both good-looking, I guess, albeit in a jailbait sort of way, which certainly didn’t help my opinion of this John guy much. They were kneeling, hands tightly clasped behind their backs, in front of, yes, the third door on the right. When I came up the stairs they both stared at me in dull, exhausted confusion, and one of them jerked her head and started gagging like she was about to throw up.

“Let me guess,” I said (softly, so anyone inside the room wouldn’t hear). “Kneel and be quiet?” The girl who’d tried to speak nodded frantically. “OK, then.” I squatted down next to two of them. “That looks uncomfortable.” Another nod. It really did. Phil had been kneeling in front of my apartment, but he’d managed to make it look like meditative rest; probably helped by the fact that he’d had his hands on his knees, not ratcheted behind his back, and that he had actually been zoned out the whole time. These two were just stuck here, fully conscious. I could sympathize.

“It’s OK. I’m here to help.” The quieter one—well, sort of quieter—sagged with relief (then straightened up again, since her new position looked even less comfortable). The other gave me a more skeptical look. “Is there anyone here other than you two, Alicia, Rachel, and the guy?” A shake of the head. “Good. I can manage this.” A more desperate shake of the head. Of course, she had no idea what I was doing here, and probably didn’t think I knew what I was getting into. I pulled out the ball-gag and brandished it at her. Her eyes widened in comprehension and I grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m a professional.” And, technically, doing this on my own time, but she didn’t need to know that. I swapped the gag out for my taser and then went to the door.

The door to the bedroom was unlocked—of course, since it wasn’t like the two poor girls outside were going to come in uninvited—and I opened it slowly in the hopes that our boy wouldn’t notice. Not to worry. On the bed, a man—young, built like a running back, bulldog face, presumably ‘John’—was getting blown by Rachel. He wasn’t going to notice anything. Rachel looked like she always did to me—small, sort of boyish figure, mousy hair and a face I’d call ‘cute’ rather than ‘sexy’—but I kept getting this unpleasant pressure behind my eyeballs every time I looked directly at her, so I figured she was working her mojo. I suppose that was why she got grabbed; a slave with seduction powers would give value for money. Ignoring the fact that she was liable to have talented friends. Like me. I shot him.

He spasmed, and Rachel shoved herself off his cock so fast she tumbled off the bed, and then just lay on the floor, retching. Outside, there was a thud and a yell of pain; one of the two girls outside collapsing, presumably. I rushed forwards with the gag but couldn’t force it into his mouth before the taser ran out of juice.

“Stop!” John shouted, and somebody rammed a pickaxe through my temples. I actually did freeze up for a second, just from the shock and pain, and through my suddenly tunneling vision I could see him smirking up at me. “You’re going to pay for that, bitch.”

My razor wit saved me. “No, fuck you,” I mumbled, and punched him in the nose. The pain in my head instantly lessened. Violence: good for what ails ya. It worked on squid from beyond the stars three years ago and it worked on this asshole now. I laid into him, and when he finally stopped shouting at me to stop and tried to land a punch back—he had one hell of a right hook, but the pain of his commands had been far worse than the impact on my ribs—I tasered him again. That cut the pain off totally, and it was all I could do not to collapse in relief. Instead I grabbed the gag again and got it in his mouth this time, holding it in with one hand while the other fumbled blindly with the straps behind his head.

“Geh hoh muh!” I’d dropped the taser and it was spent again but I felt nothing. I’d gotten him. Well, sort of gotten him. He couldn’t talk properly, and therefore apparently couldn’t use his power anymore, but I was only managing this with both hands and then he hit me in the gut again. He wasn’t even trying to grab my wrists, just punching me over and over.

“Rachel! Help me!” I wheezed. I gave up on trying to close the straps and bore all my weight down on the gag in his mouth in desperation. I took another couple of body hits and nearly lost my grip anyways. Then the bed bounced as someone else climbed onto it, and she shouted “Bastard!” and sacked him. That did the trick. His eyes widened and he stopped hitting me. I took the opportunity to attach the gag properly and then pulled out the handcuffs. The other woman—it was the ‘talkative’ girl from outside—climbed up next to me, and helped me grab his hands and cuff them around a bar in the headboard so he couldn’t get the gag off. Couldn’t get out of the bed, either, but I was really out of sympathy for this fucker.

The moment the handcuffs clicked shut I flopped off the bed onto the floor, next to the still-shaking Rachel. “Are you OK?” asked the talkative girl. I really wasn’t. My peripheral vision was still shot and my ears were ringing and my mouth tasted like iron. Oh, and without the panic of the fistfight, I could pay attention to my ribs again and shit did they hurt. What a waste of a perfectly good fibramic shirt. Nobody here had even been armed, and the blunt trauma of the beating had gone through it like nothing. With my luck, he’d probably cracked a plate and I’d have to get a replacement.

I pushed myself upright anyways, ignoring the way my head spun and my vision flashed white. “No, not really, but I’ll be better soon.” I hugged my knees and listened to John raging—unintelligibly, and uselessly—on the bed. Justice triumphs again. I hoped I wouldn’t throw up. I wasn’t sure my ribs could take it.

* * *

Rachel, Alicia, the two girls—Ellenie and Jane, apparently—and I trouped out to the car in disheveled array. I looked thrashed—eyes bloodshot, holding onto my side and leaning heavily on Rachel—and the other four were pretty much wiped too: Alicia from two days of guarding the house, Ellenie and Jane from a long stretch of muscles-rigid kneeling, Rachel from being forced to keep her power going for a night and most of a day. Their clothes were whatever we’d been able to scrape up in the house before fleeing the scene, and nobody except me and Alicia was wearing shoes. Before we’d even reached the sidewalk I was regretting making Phil park so far away.

Still, we all limped out there, and Phil came running from the car as soon as he saw Rachel with me. “Oh, thank God you’re OK, love, oh thank God, oh thank God —” Rachel grabbed him tight and started crying into his shoulder. I nearly fell when she rushed out from underneath me, and ended up having to stand still and take shallow breaths for a minute, but I didn’t mind. This moment was what I’d come out here for. I smiled.

Then the moment passed and we started walking to the car again. It didn’t have enough seats for six so I ended up sitting in the rear footwell. Phil was in the best shape and probably should have been down there, but on the other hand he was the only one in any state to drive. As it was, if Phil got into an accident I was going to die.

“What an asshole,” said Rachel raggedly, from the front. “‘Come with me’, ‘shut up’, ‘kneel’, ‘suck my cock’. Not one thing about enjoying it. Fucking jackass.”

“Pretty unprofessional,” I agreed.

“What?” said Ellenie.

“Controlling a bunch of people and not even trying to make them think it’s a good idea. You end up getting kicked in the balls during fights, and thank you for that, Ellenie.”

“It’s also incredibly cruel,” said Rachel.

“Yeah, there’s that.”

“Where to?” asked Phil, before Rachel and the others can lay into me for my unconcern.

“Home,” said Rachel immediately. “We’ll get the rest of you cleaned up properly before we drop you back off.”

I got this ear-achey twinge in my head. “Hypocrite,” I said, without heat.

“No, I’m not. Everyone is going to be a lot happier once we get this behind us.” She turned around and smiled at the other former captives. She looked shaky and exhausted to me; I wondered what it looked like to the others. Probably like some angelic savior. By tomorrow morning they’d probably remember me as ‘that other minion of Rachel’s who helped her rescue them.’

Well, whatever. They were free, and Rachel was right: she definitely could make them feel better. And whether I got a thank you for it after today or not, I had rescued them, and gotten to unload some cathartic violence in the process. That was worth it. I leant back against Alicia’s shins behind me, and did my best to relax.

My cell rang.

No rest for the weary. It was Susan “Starlight” Muñoz, of course. “Laura? Dr Martin asked me out for coffee and I don’t know what to do.”

Maybe that’s why I like Rachel so much. She does what she wants to Phil—and semi-strangers she got kidnapped alongside with—and doesn’t make me walk her through it. “Look, Susan, you’re twenty-seven. You’ve dated before. You can deal with someone asking you out for coffee.”

“But that’s the thing, I want to do it and that’s scaring me.”

And there’s the recursive second-guessing, exactly on schedule. “OK, Susan. You’ve been single for what, two years now? Franz is smart, decent-looking, and interested in you. These are legitimate reasons to want to go on a date.”

“But I don’t want to get forced into doing anything I don’t want to.”

“You do want to.”

“But I... I... you know.”

“No, I really don’t.” Why does everyone assume I can follow their ‘logic’? My theory that there’s some meta-villain out there making everyone but me crazy continues to accrue evidence. “Look, if you’re that worried, we’ll get you a psych screen afterwards. Just stop worrying and go. It will be fine.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It will be good and entirely clean. If anything happens, I’ll go down to the University and beat him up myself.” My ribs twinged at that.

“I don’t know if that’s good enough, that still leaves me wide open —”

“What do you want, me to come along and chaperone?”

“You would? That would be great, Laura. Thank you so much.” And then she hung up.

I leaned back against Alicia again. Free time: it’s that thing I used to have, before I got a job. And a hobby. And friends with issues I am supposedly qualified to solve.

We finally arrived at Rachel and Phil’s place. “You good there, Laura?” asked Rachel, as everyone else got out of the car.

“No,” I said again, “but I’ll be better after a good night’s sleep.”

“You sure you don’t want to come in?”

“I’d get a headache.”

Rachel looked hurt. “I can be discreet. Phil wouldn’t mind taking care of you.”

I’m sure he’d enjoy helping the other four get over their shared trauma more, but she was right: Phil would happily do anything she asked of him. I struggled with my conscience for a moment and then gave in. “All right, you talked me into it. I want all the aspirin you’ve got and 48 hours of sleep.” I wanted morphine, actually, but (joy of joys) opiates count as ‘mind-altering’.

“Great! Come on, everyone!” I winced at the pain.

“Discreet,” I said. Rachel had the good grace to look embarrassed.

The four women headed up to the house; Phil, with no apparent jealousy, helped lift me out of the footwell. I leaned on him as we started up the walk.

My cell rang.

“Laura?” It was Mindwipe. “We’ve got an issue, could you get down here now please?”

Screw the morphine. I just wanted a drink.