The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Decerto Terminus

by J. Darksong & Baltimore Rogers

Part 6)

My answer came as a brutal punch to the midsection, doubling me over despite my armor, and a second blow that literally sent me flying. “Aggghhh...computer...lower sensory input...by fifty percent!” I managed, trying to draw in breath. The neural feedback from my interface allowed me to respond faster than humanly possible by linking my brain synapses directly into my suit’s computer processor. In short, my suit responded directly to my thoughts just like a limb or body organ, only faster, as the nerve impulses were powered by the most advanced wetware CPU I’d ever designed. On the flip side of that innovation, the suit transmitted information back directly into my brain through the interface as biofeedback, and in the rare case when the suit was actually physically damaged, the resulting trauma felt as real to me as if it were actually happening to my body. So while Omega Girl’s sucker punch hadn’t actually shattered all of my ribs, before lowering the interface sensitivity by half, it sure felt like it.

Landing on my feet, back in control again, I brought up my defenses, locking on to my wife, even as I contacted Duncan back through my comm link. “So, Duncan,” I said candidly, as the being resembling my wife merely stood there, idly watching me, making no additional actions, “perhaps you’d care to explain what’s happening here?”

“Well, you DID say you could handle anything I chose to throw at you, did you not?” Duncan replied with sadistic humor. “But perhaps it’s simply that I haven’t given you enough of a challenge?” He snapped his fingers...and a split second later I was hit—hard—from the side, sent flying yet again by something streaking so fast my defensive system had only tracked it as incoming after the fact. Reacting again, I righted myself in midair, positioning myself to land, only to find myself caught, held by a pair of strong feminine arms. Lacie’s arms.

SEVERAL of Lacie’s arms.

What the...ach...ah get it, I thought furiously as the Omega Girl holding me deposited me none-too-gently onto the ground, while a second and third copy hovered in midair above me, simply watching, awaiting their turn. Clones. Of course, Gene, ye bloody idiot. He’s a master of genetics after all. Expanding my sensor grid, I then noted four...no, FIVE total and exact replicas of my wife hovering about in the area. This wasn’t good, not by any stretch of the imagination. Even at my best, I was only a close match for Omega Girl, and I was hardly at my best. Multiply that by a factor of five, and add in the fact that all of my adversaries bore no small resemblance to my beloved wife...I was deeply, utterly and brutally buggered.

Well, it could be worse, I thought, chuckling to myself, I could be facing five Omega-Girl-powered Patricia Grimalde clones. For a brief moment I wondered what Patty and Nigel were doing right now, but the moment passed quickly. Ach! Enough woolgathering, old son. Get yer head back in the game here whilst ye still have one!

“Well then,” I announced loudly, standing up and dusting myself off, activating all of my suit’s offensive systems. “Let’s get to it then, shall we? Who’s first?”

* * *

It was a rare evening alone for Nigel and Patricia. They had been very busy lately. Their jobs being what they were, they were used to snagging time together on the fly, lunch dates, quick conversations before bedtime, quick phone chats during the day that were more of an excuse to exchange I-love-yous than anything else. But tonight they both had some downtime. And, due to some magical confluence of events, a full house normally bustling with activity was completely empty. Tawnya and Delores had taken the kids to see the new Disney-Pixar movie. Angela was working late with Ajay on something related to the bimbo virus. Sioban was at some post-colloquium mixer at the College of Engineering.

And Constance? Constance had taken one look at Nigel and Patricia cuddled on the living room couch, given a very theatrical yawn, and declared, with a hint of a grin and a twinkle in her eye, that she was very tired and going to bed early. While Patricia picked out a movie for them to watch, Nigel threw a bag of popcorn in the microwave and grabbed a bottle of white wine from the mini-cellar in the kitchen complex. When he met her back at the couch, she had already cued up “When Harry Met Sally”. He grinned at her; so, she was in one of those moods tonight.

Patricia, exercising that ineffable spouse telepathy that grows from year after year of loving closeness, realized exactly what her husband was thinking. Grinning back at him, Patricia said in a mock-exasperated voice, “Oh, come on, Nigel, we can’t watch ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ every time.“

“Now, baby,” he admonished, “You of all people should know that I enjoy a wide variety of cinema.”

Pushing her nose up in the air, she mocked his distinctive gruff-but-erudite voice, “You ‘enjoy a wide variety of cinema’, you say? You’re so full of it sometimes, Mr. Grimalde.”

“Well, Mrs. Grimalde,” he replied, settling down on the couch, “I had to adapt so that I could hold my own with all the genius women that surround me. But seriously, I’m not complaining! Do you see me complaining?”

Patricia snuggled into his shoulder, reached across him, and grabbed as small hand-full of popcorn. “You’re only complaining with your eyes, but I can live with that. Besides,” she said, “you know why I love this movie so much.”

“Because it’s the all-time heavyweight champion of chick flicks?”

“You ass!” she squealed, punching him lightly in the chest, “You know why! C’mon. Say it.“

“Say what?” he asked teasingly.

“Nigel,” she said, suddenly serious, “say what you said to me when you gave me my ring.”

Serious as a heart attack himself, Nigel looked deeply into the eyes of the woman he loved, and reenacted one of his, and Billy Crystal’s, finest moments, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

Patricia mock-swooned and fell against his shoulder again. Then she reached over him to grab the remote.

“Uh-uh,” he said, holding it out of her reach, “First I want to show you something.”

“Oh. Nigel, not now! Let’s just watch the movie.“

“No, seriously, you’ll like this.” He changed the input and hit play. It was a scene from the press conference the other day, starting just after Nigel had opened the floor for questions.

“Mrs. Grimalde?” said the reporter, “Will you be leading this investigation?”

On-screen, Patricia smiled broadly and replied, “No. As a matter of fact, criminal investigations are not within the purview of the federal prosecutor’s office. It turns out there is a whole separate organization within the federal government that is responsible for criminal investigations. You may have heard of them...” There was a pregnant pause. You could hear a pin drop. Patricia-on-tape had an evil glint in her eye. “They’re called the Federal...Bureau...of Investigation.”

A collective groan went up from the assembled reporters, and slowly transformed into scattered laughter.

Nigel hit pause and turned to his wife. “You had them in the palm of your hand, babe. They loved you. And it’s not just reporters. Every time you speak in public it’s like gold nuggets are dripping from your lips. You should do it.”

“Do it, Nigel?”

“You should run.”

She eyed him nervously. This wasn’t the first time he’d brought it up. “Run for what, Nigel?”

“Run for Mayor. Run for State Senate. Run for Attorney General. Secretary of State. Governor! You can do it. You’d win.”

“Nigel, we’ve talked about this. There are too many people who know, you know, about...about...”

“About Blackfinger. Yeah, baby, I know. But there’s nobody who knows who wouldn’t ruin their own life in the process by letting the cat out of the bag.”

“But honey, do you really want to take that risk? What if some idiot, say Parker Albinn maybe, were to decide to fall on his sword to prevent ‘Blackfinger’s Love Slave’ from seizing political power, huh? He could ruin our lives, and then I would lose, or worse, be forced to resign after winning. I would have spent all that time, money and effort, and it would all be for nothing. I wouldn’t be able to do any good for anybody, not like I can as a prosecutor.“

He paused, considering her words carefully. The truth was, she was absolutely right. It wouldn’t even have to be a well-meaning fool like Albinn. It could be some asshole in the criminal world that weighed the consequences and decided that the Grimaldes had more to lose than the asshole did and just went ahead and blackmailed them.

“Okay,” he said, a small tremor in his voice, “I’ll do it. Blackfinger is retiring for good.”

“Wait, honey, can you really do that?” She knew that for years he had held onto his criminal organization mostly because he was afraid that others would see giving it up as a sign of weakness, as a reason to attack. Sure, he enjoyed the thrill of a good heist or con—Patricia had never been able to cure him of that, never even tried really—but mostly he had held onto underworld power because there was no safe or graceful way to let it go.

“It might take a while, and...I would need to cultivate some powerful friends.” Somehow his mind wandered to Eugene Frasier. Is it possible? Could I really have more than just an alliance of convenience with a man who has been a ‘Cold War’ enemy for so many years? I guess we’ll see. I’ll have to figure out how to approach this when he comes home, when he’s done with that monster Duncan. Assuming he wins. I might as well bank on it, no one anywhere will be making ANY long term plans about anything if Duncan wins. I wonder how that’s going? I wonder what he’s doing right now?

“Patricia, honey, it might take me more than a year, but I swear I’ll get it done. I will. Count on it. In the meantime, don’t just sit back and wait for me. You should put together an exploratory committee. You should start raising funds. You should be planning out ways to keep your name in the news. You should be ready to run as soon as you get the chance.”

And there it was, a dream that she had had for years and years, a thrill of competition that she had first felt when she campaigned for—and won—the post of Law Review Editor at Stanford. And soon I’ll be doing it for real. It’s almost too good to be true! Running for office. Wow.

“Nigel...darling...do you mind if I change chick flicks?”

“What do you want to watch now, baby doll?”

“I want to see ‘The American President’.”

Nigel looked her in the eye and grinned. She smiled back, eyes full of love and hope and the thrill of a new adventure. Nigel Grimalde kissed his amazing, talented, courageous wife, and handed her the remote.

* * *

I was in dire straits.

First of all, I was apparently mistaken. The clones were NOT exact duplicates of Omega Girl. They had actually been upgraded...as I found when tackling one of them, streaking through the air, preparing to toss her a few hundred miles away to the coast, she suddenly let loose with an intense powerful electrical discharge, nearly shorting out all of my systems in the process. My Ai’s buffers held, but just barely. On the good side, my nearly drained power levels went from eleven percent to two hundred and twelve percent by the time I broke contact.

“Give it up, Armor Man,” the second clone, who has apparently been given the ability to ignite itself on fire, taunted. “You cannot win. You are outnumbered, as well as outgunned. Surrender now, and my Master will be merciful.”

A flat out lie, of course. As a kid, Duncan used to perform biological experiments on the local fauna by dissecting the neighborhood pets. He did not know the meaning of the word mercy. To my deep regret, I DID know the word. Intimately. And as she and the Electro-clone moved in for another attack, I cycled up my prototype Silver Gun, and took aim. Clone of not, I couldn’t destroy an innocent woman, even if she was trying to do so to me. Both hits struck true, and they shuddered, wavering in midair, as my weapon did its work, depleting their minds’ higher reasoning abilities.

“Verra good. Now ladies, I want ye both to power down, and leave the area, heading out towards the coastline—”

Huh. “Or, not,” I replied, activating my electromagnetic shielding to disperse Electro-clone’s static blast, and firing a quick blast of my liquid nitrogen reserves to counter Fire-clone’s inferno attack. I was apparently in deeper trouble than I thought. My Silver Gun should have worked! It works on the real Omega Girl, so it should have worked on them...their minds should be completely mine, their reasoning and thought processes disrupted, leaving them unable to do anything but...follow orders...ah, shite.

Of course, Duncan’s controlling them. Their minds are probably already numbed to any thoughts except the ones he’s feeding them. I might as well try poking a quadriplegic with a pointy stick asking him if it hurts.

The third clone, the one I thought of as the Stone-clone, made its presence felt as well, sending up a hail of rocks and stones at me from underneath. After a particularly brutal pounding, I’d countered by grabbing her, and slamming her down hard into the ground, hoping at least to temporarily stun her, or at least knock the wind out of her. Instead, she’d actually MERGED with the stone, coating it around her like armor, then turning the rock beneath my feet into quicksand, nearly sucking me down underneath the ground before I managed to break free. Since then, I’d kept to the skies whenever possible, keeping out of her reach.

The fourth one, which I called Shadow-clone, was hanging back for the moment, nursing her wounds, no doubt waiting for another chance to try and strike out at me. Where the others’ genetic alterations seemed styled for offensive capabilities, Shadow-clone seemed designed for stealth. She’d made the mistake of turning invisible, trying to attack me from behind, assuming my scanners couldn’t detect what my eyes couldn’t see. The face full of plasma she received for the effort taught her differently.

The only good news so far was that from the one good hit I’d gotten on Speedy-clone, intercepting her during a supersonic charge, her momentum had sent her careening so far into the sky she had probably achieved orbit.

Bottom line? For all of my posturing and fighting, I was no closer to reaching my brother now than I had been an hour ago when these Omega clones first emerged. This was never going to end unless I somehow managed to draw him out of his fortress. And before that, I needed to find a way to deal with these blasted copycats. I needed to walk a tightrope if I was going to manage both without killing the poor mentally dominated lassies in the process.

“Having fun, my brother?” Duncan’s voice taunted me through my comm unit, as his minions charged me yet again. Simultaneously, my AI alerted me to an encrypted message being received from the compound as well, my little ‘ace in the hole’. “You seem to be having some trouble. Perhaps I underestimated you after all. Earlier, you showed an unrepentant attitude towards stopping me, willing to do whatever it took to get to me, despite any so-called innocents you might have to step over in the process. Now, here you are at the very cusp of victory, a few yards from your goal, and NOW you’re hesitating to get your hands bloody?”

“I did what was necessary, brother,” I responded back with heat. “No more, no less. If your plan was to turn me into a heartless killing machine like you in order to defeat you, you’ve failed. Someone important to me reminded me that there are some lines not worth crossing no matter the cost. I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you, Duncan, but I won’t let me manipulate me anymore!” I read the decrypted file, a one word message: DRLYS.

“Hah! A bit late for such sentiment now, isn’t it? Even if you survive our encounter, the entire world thinks of you as an enemy, a rogue Super gone mad, destroying government facilities, attacking innocent people, extorting ‘legitimate’ businessmen for their technology...even invading a foreign country...all in your relentless pursuit of me!” He laughed again. “Ironic, isn’t it? Trying to save the world from my tyranny, you’ve made yourself into a worldwide threat! Not that I would ever allow anyone else the pleasure of ending your life, dear brother. That joy I reserve for myself alone!”

“Aaaaauuuggghhn!” I cried as Electro-clone and Fire-clone managed to snatch an arm each, clamping down hard, and pulling with their considerable strength as their innate heat and electricity did their best to disrupt my systems in the process. Shite...shite...power’s dropping again...aaahhh...structural integrity breached? Not possible...each seam and strut of this bloody armor is sealed on the molecular level...yet they are literally ripping me apart! Weapon systems going offline...communications systems? Still functional...aye, good...if THAT goes I am done like dinner. So...what’s left? My gauntlet blasters still work...sonic disruptors circuits and my disintegrator circuits are intact...but I can’t use those against a living breathing being...

Living...breathing...being? DRLYS. Dr. Lys. Dr. Lys?!?

Bloody hell.

Firing my sonic disruptors from my gauntlets, taking both clones from point-blank range, I blew them both free of my form, sending them both crashing to earth. I was pissed, though I wasn’t sure at this point whether I was more upset with Duncan for the deception, or at myself for just now realizing it. The encrypted message I’d received, mentioning the demented doctor that had recently tormented my nieces from Midas City in search of a so-called ‘Brighter Future’...Dr. Lys’ crowning achievement was the creation of pseudo-clone, synthetic cybernetic bio-organism versions of wee Aurora LaSilvas, called Dawnlings, capable of utilizing her metallic shielding and her spark creating powers, but utterly mindless, capable only of performing whatever simple tasks they were programmed with. This mention of Lys in my current situation only confirmed that these Omega Girl clones were in fact upgraded Dawnlings. They were fused with Lacie’s DNA, using her powers and her voice, and her appearance but hardly living breathing sentient beings, as I’d incorrectly assumed.

Which meant I could stop holding back.

Rocketing forward, I caught the falling Fire-clone by the arm, spinning her rapidly, building her momentum a bit before launching her burning arse at the Stone-clone. Impacting hard, fire met rock, melting them both into slag, but I wasn’t done yet. Reaching for the Electro-clone, another hard fling slung it into the other two. Electricity met hot melted rock, a non-conductor, and grounded out. And finally, systems failing, power low, I powered up my disintegrator cannon, and delivered the coup de grace, blasting the three clones into a smoking crater and a few remaining particles of inanimate matter.

Dropping down to the ground, panting from the effort, I sighed deeply, taking stock of my condition. Seventy-six percent system failure. External and internal structural breaches. Main weapon systems offline. Backup weapons systems functional at fifty percent capacity. Defensive systems critical. Inertial dampeners offline. Damn...about the only thing I have left on this hulking wreck are my communications array, my right gauntlet blaster, and my boot jets. And I still have Shadow-clone to deal with.

Apparently, though, I’d impressed Duncan enough with my little show that he’d finally decided to take my presence here seriously. With a flourish, he dropped down from the sky, landing a few feet away from me, arms crossed, a bored disinterested look on his face. And to my disappointment, Shadow-clone, and the long lost, Speedy-clone, returned, joining him at his side.

“Well...I see you’ve managed to survive my minions’ best attempts to send you to your grave,” he said with a sigh. “You showed your surprising intellect in tracking me down, as well as a refreshing bit of ruthlessness in fighting your way here. I doubted you had it in you to destroy my little clones, bearing the face of your beloved wife, but again, you surprised me. It seems you’ve finally reached down deep and found the one thing you’ve always lacked, little brother—that killer instinct.” He smiled devilishly, opening and removing his navy blue business jacket, revealing a strange metal harness of metal tubes and wires partially embedded within his bare chest. “Now, at least, you are a worthy opponent for me. Come...let us have the true decerto terminus! Let us fight...to the death!“