The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Not being able to hurry was maddening. They had to catch up! Losing Csina... But they had to take those perfect, measured steps, feet touching down in exact cadence with the drones surrounding them. Their strides could be a fraction longer, a fraction faster, but running was out of the question.

Anni was in front. If she lapsed into a trance again, Candaes wanted her to be in view so that she could take action. She didn’t want to turn around and find Anni simply vanished.

Candaes found herself staring at Anni’s back. The grey slime clinging to her body was only just visible as a thin blob dug into the crack of her ass. The goop that clutched at her breasts had no presence on her back; if it were a racy swimsuit, it would have to have been held on with spirit gum.

Candaes still felt disturbingly aroused. She wanted to kiss Anni, to lie with her and to touch her soft body all over. To have Anni’s head between her legs, something Candaes had never done with another woman. But now she wanted it badly, wanted sex with a woman more than she wanted almost anything else—and she would have killed a birthday party to get a cold beer.

Candaes focused on the beer for a moment, then came back to her reality with a stifled sigh. Around her swirled a dozen drones; when Anni had lapsed into trance she had been just about to enter a major corridor, and now they were both marching stiffly down that very corridor, hoping against hope to catch up to their friends.

Hoping they had turned the right way.

Anni slowed down, and Candaes drifted sideways to see around her. Her hope turned to fear.

Two slugsuited women were standing near an antennae woman, and as Anni and Candaes approached another antennae woman rose from a sphincter in the floor. The latest arrival, glistening with fluid, turned slowly to look down the hall at them.

The woman’s mouth curved into a smile under her liquid black eyes.

It was Terry.

Candaes grabbed Anni’s shoulder and pulled her down a side corridor. The two of them ran, drone walking cadence completely discarded. A slugsuited woman emerged from a membrane on the right and they dodged around her, but she only watched them run by with mild curiosity on her face.

A floor sphincter loomed on the left; Candaes pointed at it, sped ahead of Anni, and jumped on. With a frustrating languor, it pulled her down.

She was pushed through the tube, a grape going down a throat, five seconds, ten, fifteen. How far did this tube go?

When she rose from the floor in a strange hall, Candaes thankfully sucked in a breath of air. She stepped quickly aside, and Anni rose from the floor beside her.

This corridor was dim, lit by ceiling panes that gave a slightly reddish light. It was damp and fleshy, the same as the other tunnels they had been in, but seemed smaller, tighter. Looking down the tunnel in either direction, Candaes saw no motion. There were dark spaces on the walls that she realized were open doorways; so far all of the rooms she had seen had been entered through membranes. Simply standing open, they reminded Candaes of the back of a throat.

She shared a quick look with Anni, who waited placidly for Candaes to lead.

Eenie meenie minie moe. Left it was. Candaes started walking, her body falling back into the drone cadence naturally. Which was good, no sense looking out of place if an antennae woman happened to be inside one of those openings.

How were they going to find the others now?

Up. She just had to lead them up.

They came to the first opening, on the right, and Candaes peered in. It was a small room, not much wider than the corridor but a trifle taller, and on the far side it opened onto another hall running parallel to the one they were in. In the eight or so meters between the two passageways there were four figures standing motionless, evenly spaced, just in front of the walls.

For a moment Candaes felt a jolt of worry, but the figures didn’t move. Candaes realized that they were four rubberdolls, standing at equal intervals, two in front of either wall. Their hands were at their sides and slightly behind, reminding Candaes of sailing ship figureheads. Their giant breasts—and Candaes refrained from looking at Anni—pointed giant grey nipples across the room at each other’s feet. Their white, glossy eyes stared blankly forward.

And they were... attached. A thick grey column rose from the base of the wall behind each doll and thrust up between her legs.

They should keep going. Candaes looked ahead down the hall, then back into the room with the four dolls.

For some reason, she wanted to see more.

Candaes stepped into the dimly lit room. She approached one of the dolls; her fuchsia flesh seemed almost normal in the reddish light. Her lips were bow-shaped and swollen; her head was bald and slick. From the front, her hips were a huge circle with her slick bald sex at the center.

Candaes wanted to raise her hands and feel those huge tits. She stifled the idea. She looked between the doll’s legs at the grey rod that was apparently stuffed into her sex.

A drop of liquid trickled down it.

These women were alive. Feeling this. Being fucked slowly by the walls.

The doll’s face showed only mindless blankness.

What was going on in their heads?

Candaes looked over at Anni and saw that the redhead was staring at a rubberdoll, slowly licking her upper lip.

Time to go.

She put a hand on Anni’s shoulder and Anni slowly turned her head, eyes gone distant again. Her mouth opened silently, then she blinked slowly and came back to her senses. Candaes tilted her head toward the doorway and Anni nodded.

They left the room.

Ten meters further up the passage and there was another room, identical to the previous one. Four rubberdolls, hands at their sides, facing each other across the room. Thick rubbery columns rising up between their legs. On the far side, another hallway, almost certainly the same one.

Ten meters more, and the same again.

And again.

It was like a ladder, or a helix; two passageways connected by small rungs, each with four plugged-in rubberdolls.

They walked by the next rung, but then Candaes paused. She took a few steps back and entered the dark room. She considered one of the rubberdolls, who stared mindlessly back at her.

This doll looked a little different. Her nose, though small compared to her swollen lips and glossy forehead, was a bit stronger, straighter.

Candaes walked around the room and looked at all four rubberdolls. They were all just a tiny bit different, their cheeks a little fuller or higher, their brows angled just slightly differently from each other.

They weren’t... quite... identical.

These were all individual women. Their individuality was almost wholly dissolved into the rubberdoll form, but they were nonetheless slightly different from each other.

Had the previous ones been? Candaes didn’t think so, but she hadn’t been focused on their faces.

Candaes didn’t know what it meant. She led Anni back into the hall.

The hall curved, so they were either moving in a circle or up and down a large spiral. The hall on the other side of the rooms appeared to be moving in tandem.

They walked for a while, passing room after room, each with four rubberdolls standing motionlessly within.

Then, one of the rungs was empty.

Candaes paused. They had been walking for almost fifteen minutes. The curve of the hall was enough that they were possibly directly above where they had started. Maybe twice, for all that she could tell. They hadn’t encountered a single other ambulatory person, be she drone, antennae woman, or rubberdoll. Just room after room of plugged-in unmoving rubberdolls.

This room was empty. It was identical to the previous rooms; there were even four obvious ‘stations’, places where the base of the column stood thrusting upward from the floor, lacking only the final half-meter that plugged in between the legs of the dolls.

Candaes glanced at Anni, who was staring blankly into space, a small smile on her face.

“Anni?”

“Yes?”

“You okay?”

Anni blinked and gave a soft sigh. Her eyes focused on Candaes. “I’m fine,” she replied. “Why have we stopped?”

Candaes hesitated. “Just... looking at something. We can go.”

“Okay,” Anni said softly, still smiling. Not rising from her placid semi-trance.

Suddenly Candaes realized. She would never see Csina again. Never see any of them, never make it to Washington Station, never get to relax in human company, never have a hot shower...

No. She clenched her fists. No. She would not give in. Candaes Curry would go down fighting. Whatever her fate, she would not meet it on her knees.

“Come on,” she said, and resumed walking.

Now all the rooms were empty. Empty room after empty room, four mounds rising from each floor to mark the place where the inhabitants were, or would be.

Candaes’ sudden wave of despair ebbed away. Up. She just had to go up. Somewhere up there, toward the center of the spin, was Washington Station. She would get there, and Csina would be there, and they’d find some way to defeat the Omphalids...

She turned to look at Anni, and was relieved to see Anni still following her. Her face was vague and unfocused, the smile replaced by an utterly blank stare. The grey slime pulsed and Anni shivered, yet her stride did not deviate.

Candaes turned back, her thoughts on how to deal with Anni—and she almost walked into a pair of drones. Startled, she stopped cold.

A membrane had opened in the wall—Candaes hadn’t even seen it—and the drones walked out carrying a burden between them.

It was a woman, wrapped in a plastic bag.

No, not plastic—a sac, like the pod Candaes had awoken in, only it was wrinkled and loose, drooping over the curves of the woman’s nude body. The fluid inside was slightly pink in color, though with the red lighting in this part of the Hive it took a moment to realize that.

The two drones carried the woman into the empty room opposite the membrane. Candaes had stopped and stared after them. The woman in the sac had her eyes closed but her face was moving, her mouth opening in silent words, her head weaving slowly back and forth.

The drones carried her to one of the pointed mounds rising from the floor. The one who carried the woman’s legs lowered those to the floor, and the other gripped her shoulders and raised her into a standing position. The two of them held the woman in her fluid-filled sac up, and waited. The fluid ran sluggishly down, settling at a level around her waist.

Candaes felt a shudder in the floor. Ponderously, a phallus emerged from the hump in the floor, unsheathing as it came up, the tip a flat-headed cylinder. It pushed up into the clear skin of the sac and then the sac parted, somehow without tearing, and the tip of the phallic hose slid upward through the fluid and pushed into the woman’s crotch.

The two drones reached down, took hold of her thighs, and spread them slightly apart.

The fleshy tube pushed up into the woman’s pussy and her eyes flew open, her mouth gaping. Her body clenched, and clenched again, and her eyes rolled up into her head.

Only then did Candaes see the tube that had descended from above her; it stopped a handsbreadth above the woman’s face and a dozen small tendrils, each the diameter of a drinking straw, slid out of it. They kept emerging, lengthening, and then they too pierced the fluid-sac.

One and then another of them slithered into the woman’s open mouth. The woman’s body started to jerk slightly, as though resisting the intrusion, but smoothly, one following the other, the slim tentacles slid into her mouth and down her throat. One slid into each of her nostrils.

One of the drones was holding her chin up, keeping the woman’s face pointed at the ceiling, as the thin tendrils slid into it.

The woman’s body shivered some more, then grew still.

The drones released her and, aside from occasional twitches of her hands, the woman remained motionless. Legs slightly spread around the thick hose plugged into her sex, face pointed upward with a mass of thin tentacles running into her open mouth and nose.

The drones turned and approached Candaes, who only then realized she had stood dumbly in plain sight the entire time. But they walked past her, paying no heed, and the membrane flickered open for them, and flickered closed after the second woman’s ass passed through.

Leaving Candaes alone with Anni, and the impaled woman.

She should keep going. Those drones... they had no motivation, but perhaps an antennae woman might read their minds, might discover Candaes here.

But...

She looked at the woman in the sac, her legs spread, her head thrown back, penetrated from both ends. Swallowed.

What could she do? She was nude, without any tools, and her teeth couldn’t even tear a pod open.

The wall opened behind her and two more drones emerged, carrying another woman in a clear sac. Candaes stepped quickly aside as the two nude women carried the second cocooned woman past. She was slender, darker-skinned, with a strong face and long black hair. She also had her eyes closed but was thrashing in slow motion, her mouth working slowly, her body flexing within the sac.

The drones stood her up astride the mound opposite the first woman. Her head lolled, her mouth open and moving, as the fluid in the sac oozed down to her waist.

She had quite a collection of tattoos.

Candaes blinked. The woman... had tattoos. She hadn’t been rejuvenated, she wasn’t from a pod, she was freshly caught. Candaes looked quickly at the first woman—yes, she was older. Biologically in her fourth or fifth decade. So: also newly captured.

What... did it mean?

The phallic hose was sliding upward from the floor, and the matching tentacle descending from the ceiling. The drones gently spread the woman’s legs to let the thick tube push up into her.

Anni’s hand was stroking between her legs.

Candaes couldn’t... do anything. She had no knife, not even a nail clipper. She was stark naked. Her fingernails weren’t even very long.

The woman writhed as the rising phallus burrowed into her. Pleasure? Horror? Both? Her eyes never opened. The drone on the right put a hand under her chin, raised it to face the ceiling.

Candaes’ heart thudded as the small tendrils snaked their way down into the woman’s face. The woman twitched, her hips bucked, and then slowly she grew still.

The drones turned and walked wall-eyed from the chamber.

She had to go. She couldn’t do anything here. These women were caught. Had been caught. Their fates sealed when the Omphalids overran their ship or their colony or wherever.

She took Anni’s wrist. “Come on,” she said.

Anni did not reply, but walked obediently after her.

They were going up. Had to be. It felt like it.

They were definitely going in a spiral. The curve of the fleshy tunnel never changed, but they never passed the same room twice.

The women were all different. Different colors, different sizes, different shapes. Some were teens, some were in their sixties or possibly more. All had their eyes closed, their mouths stuffed with tentacles, their legs spread around an wrist-thick tube of flesh. Their hands limp at their side.

Candaes eventually gave up taking notice of them and simply walked. If they went up far enough, they would find the station. They had to.

So they walked.

And walked.

They encountered no more drones, nor any antennae women. They walked without meeting anyone at all.

Candaes noticed idly that the fluid-filled sacs which encased the women seemed to be getting smaller. The rooms were still dim and red, but it definitely seemed as though the sacs were smaller and tighter around the forms of the women than they had been a few cycles below, the fluid squeezed up higher, over their breasts. And the women were bustier, more like Anni than... than...

Candaes stopped, and walked into the closest room. She stood in front of one of the women and gaped.

They were turning into rubberdolls.

These woman—all four of them—had very large breasts. Slightly different, rounder or higher or longer, but all at the top end of the human spectrum. All four of them had wide, round hips. Their lips had taken on a pronounced pout, were looking beestung and swollen. Their skin was tight and glossy, and was within a few gradients of the same hue.

They were all starting to look the same.

The woman in front of Candaes had brown hair in a loose, shoulder-length cut. Her brows were high, her nose strong... but not as strong as it probably had been. The woman next to her was much finer-boned, with a round forehead and thin limbs... but not so thin as they might have started, and her hips were swollen and curved.

All of their hips were.

And their breasts.

They were becoming identical. Identical mindless drones.

Candaes looked at Anni, who stared blankly into space.

How many women had they walked by? Hundreds? A thousand? How many of them were even now losing their identity, mutating slowly into obscene-bodied parodies with obedient, robotic, identical brains.

Candaes should have been horrified. But... she couldn’t muster it. Her ability to recoil seemed to have burned itself out.

She looked up at the woman in front of her. She had been a daughter. Perhaps a sister, a mother. She had hopes and dreams and experiences and a life.

And now her pussy was impaled on an alien flesh probe and her mind was slowly being melted away; her body turned into a hyper-female obscenity. Her body and her mind. She was being transformed into just one more identical slave among thousands, and tens of thousands.

It was her destiny.

That thought touched Candaes between her legs.

Candaes suddenly turned. Time to go. She could do nothing for these women. She touched Anni, who turned robotically to follow her.

They walked back into the corridor, turned, and resumed their upward march.

After more time, an hour, perhaps less, perhaps more, the women in the rooms were once again almost pure rubberdolls. The clear sacs had tightened to the point where they were merging with the women’s skin, a glossy top layer above the purple-pink skin they all now shared. The women would never emerge from their sacs—they were melding with them.

Their breasts jutted out ridiculously, capped with grey-fleshed nipples. At some point—Candaes hadn’t noticed when—the tentacles had withdrawn from their mouths and their heads had settled down to face forward. Their eyes were blank glossy white orbs.

None of them were human women any more. They were identical, rubber-fleshed, mindless dolls.

Without knowing why, Candaes stopped again. She walked into one of the dark rooms. Looked at one of the rubberdolls.

She looked just like the others. Glossy, candy pink skin. Blank white eyes. Huge hanging breasts. Her hands rested on her great smooth thighs, motionless.

She had a small hummingbird tattoo on her Venus mons.

Candaes blinked. A tiny tattoo, still marking this woman as unique. And perhaps... was there something in her face, some echo of bone structure, some remnant of the woman that once was?

Perhaps. Candaes couldn’t tell.

Was there, just maybe, some little remnant of her mind?

Candaes reached up to touch her, but stopped. Even if there was, it was the tiniest of remains. The woman’s mind was an empty husk now. A rind, a paper-thin rind around a pulsing new core. Candaes couldn’t help her, and she couldn’t help Candaes. She would only ‘help’ Candaes onto a doll-making phallus of her own.

That thought seemed suddenly very attractive. Candaes turned it away, and walked back out of the room.

Anni was waiting motionlessly in the hall. Candaes looked at her, then looked up the way they were going. How far up did this tunnel go, anyway?

They had been walking when suddenly a woman stepped out of a room ahead of them. Candaes stopped. Another one emerged, followed by two more. Four women in total, now turning slowly in place, presenting Candaes their thick buttocks and deep dimples of Venus. The four of them, in a neat two-by-two formation, began to walk away.

Not four women—four dolls.

Candaes resumed walking, following them up the hall. With identical strides, the four dolls walked slowly, two by two, up the hallway. A long streamer of clear slime dangled between their legs; they must have just now detached. As they passed the room Candaes looked inside. Sure enough, the rises in the floor were uncovered, the phallic tubes sliding back in.

The dolls kept walking.

Where were they going?

A membrane nictated open in the wall; Candaes paused, expecting the dolls to rotate to face it. But to Candaes’ surprise, they ignored it. Instead, a woman stepped out.

It was Csina.

The dolls continued walking up the hall, paying no notice to the interloper. Csina had stopped and was watching them go. Behind her, J’anna stepped out of the open orifice. She followed Csina’s gaze up at the four rubberdolls, then looked back down the hallway. Her eyes widened.

Csina almost fell over as Candaes crashed into her.

Csina’s body tensed into a fighting position but realized that it was being hugged rather than grappled. Her eyes found their focus and then Candaes’ ribs were creaking.

Candaes raised her head and Csina kissed her furiously.

They both felt a jolt of surprise. Wide eyes locked.

Then Candaes and Csina both relaxed and held onto the kiss.

Their nude bodies mashed against each other, seeking togetherness. The kiss lasted, and lasted, their hands holding tight to shoulder and lower back.

Candaes suddenly felt the warmth of arousal. She would submit to it—longed to - but... not here. Not now. Reluctantly, she released Csina’s lips.

“I thought I would never see you again,” Csina murmured.

“I... love you,” Candaes replied.

Csina’s eyes were dark, and deep. “I... love you too,” she said quietly. “How about that.”

“How did you get here?” Perrix was asking. “What happened?”

With difficulty, Candaes turned her attention from the woman in her arms. They were all there. Perrix and J’anna stood somewhat awkwardly nearby. Anni was lost in her sexual trance, hands lightly stroking the grey flesh that cupped her breasts. Candaes expected Wei-Li to be doing the same, but there was still intelligence in Wei-Li’s eyes as she stood with the others, looking at the two entwined women.

Candaes let go, and stepped back.

“We... Anni lapsed into a trance. We lost you. We hurried to catch up but then that antennae woman was there. Terry. We ran from her, jumped into one of those floor-holes. Wound up in this... spiraling ladder. We’ve been walking up ever since.”

“It’s been hours,” J’anna said. “We’ve rested and eaten twice. You’ve been in here the whole time? With the dolls?”

Candaes nodded. “Yeah.” Suddenly she was aware of a gnawing hunger and thirst.

“These coils go down for a long way,” Perrix said. “We’ve used them to get farther out into the Hive before. In fact,” she said, turning to Candaes, “I was looking for one so that we can get back to the station. This coil should take us up almost to the void.”

“The void?”

“The last obstacle between us and Washington Station. A big open space between the surface of the Omphalid vessel and the exterior of the station. It’s got air but it’s big so we called it the void. You’ll see.”

“Any chance of food or water?” Candaes said. “It’s been hours.”

“There’s a room just back through there with water,” Csina said, gesturing at the membrane.

“Oh, yes,” Candaes replied. “Please.”

“I can take you. The rest of you can wait here.”

“No no no,” Wei-Li said. “Let us not be separated again. We’ll all go.”

“Yes,” Perrix nodded, “we’ll all go.”

They drank and ate and Candaes and Anni used the excretory facilities. Apparently the grey slime didn’t interfere with urination; Candaes was unnerved enough by the facilities that she didn’t ask. Other than a handful of drones, no one saw them, and they quickly backtracked to the rubberdoll coil and resumed their march upward.

It turned out they had been near the top of the coil. Twenty minutes of walking and the rooms ended. The corridor began to curve more tightly and became perceptibly sloped.

It also became smaller, and wetter. The flesh of the walls and floor grew softer until their feet sank in with each step. The ceiling drew down until they were bent over. And then the hallway ended, walls and ceiling and floor drawing together into a point.

Perrix was in the lead. She reached out and touched the wall where it pinched together.

It opened smoothly, and air suddenly blew softly past them. Candaes’ hair stirred.

They looked out into the void.

It was an enormous space, reaching in kilometers-long curves to every side. The tunnel opened into a dimple on a crusty black surface. Above them, perhaps a kilometer away, was the mangled silver exterior of Washington Station.

Candaes had never seen Washington Station; it was a triumph of vacuum engineering, a colossal vessel blown from molten asteroid metals, a collection of silver spheres and long straight girders, twelve kilometers in diameter. Now it was ruptured and broken, yet still breathtaking.

Dozens of green vines linked the two sides to each other. Long tentacles, which stretched from the surface of the Omphalid vessel and reached up to the damaged human space station.

“How do we get there?” Csina asked, looking up.

“Those cables are hollow,” Perrix observed. “They’re just like the passages back inside the Hive. You get sucked in the bottom and spit out up there, or vice versa.”

“Are they guarded?”

“No. There’s traffic up and down but no guards. If we can pass as drones we should be able to reach the ship easily enough. The slugbugs control most of the station and all of the surface zones, so there’s no reason for them to keep security down here.”

A sudden wave of vertigo swept Candaes and she took a wobbly step sideways.

“Are you okay?” Wei-Li asked.

They were all looking at her. “Fine,” she said. “Looked up too long. What’s the gravity here?”

“Maybe a third,” Csina replied.

“It’s less on the station,” Perrix said. “For some reason they kept Washington Station’s center of gravity, but they slowed the spin. We’re not sure what’s generating it, but it would be on the external surface.” She rubbed her eyes.

“Fatigue,” Wei-Li suddenly said.

“What?”

“We’re dead tired. When is the last time any of you slept?”

They looked at each other. Candaes realized she hadn’t slept at all since she rose from her pod.

“Where can we rest?” J’anna asked. “That they won’t find us?”

No one replied. Any of the rooms they had passed through, any of the halls, were liable to have antennae woman walk in at any time.

“There,” Csina said, pointing across the black surface.

Candaes looked and saw only a dark lump on the concave skin of the Omphalid vessel. She squinted, and saw metallic glints. She concentrated further and it resolved into a crumpled metal sphere. It was part of the station, broken off and embedded on this side of the void. Had it fallen, under pseudo-gravity? Or was it blasted off during the initial attack?

It didn’t really matter. It was two hundred meters away, and chances were the slugbugs weren’t using it.

They weren’t.

It had been an observation pod, a circular room whose bottom edge was lined with windows tilted at forty-five degrees to the walls and the floor. The interior was set with long couches. A design from a less threatened time, for sitting and looking at the stars.

Now the windows were mostly gone, and the couches had broken free and were scattered around what had been the ceiling and was now the floor. But battered and broken as they were, they were nonetheless couches, and provided a marvelously soft non-flesh surface to sleep upon. Candaes hadn’t truly understood how tired she was until she saw the couches.

“Should be enough for us all,” she said.

“We should post a watch,” Csina said.

“Who? We’re all dead tired.”

“There is no sign the slugbugs have ever been here,” Perrix pointed out. Which was true, the room was littered with detritus as though it had only just crashed into the surface of the Omphalid ship; the couches were flipped around at dramatic angles, and the metal of the former ceiling was crumpled and buckled beneath their feet.

“Let’s get some of these couches laid out,” Csina said. She bent over to pick up one end of a couch, and rose with a surprised expression on her face.

“What is it?” Candaes asked.

“It’s... light,” Csina said, righting the couch and setting it so that it lay more-or-less flat.

“One third gravity,” Perrix pointed out.

“No, it’s more than that.” Csina’s brows were furrowed. She walked a few steps and lifted another couch. Raised it clear of the floor.

“Wow,” Candaes said.

“I’m not... this is weird,” Csina said, putting the couch down.

“Perhaps the couches are lighter than you expected?”

“They’re nice and soft,” J’anna said. She had laid down on the first couch which Csina had righted, and stretched out with a sigh of bliss. “Oh, I’m so tired...”

Candaes pulled at the end of a third couch; it moved, but the cushioned surface was attached to metal, and that metal turned out to be solid. Candaes lifted one end from the floor, but it was a strain.

Csina looked at her, picked the entire couch up, and righted it.

“Wow,” Candaes said again quietly.

Csina gave her a strange look, then walked away to an edge of the room. Candaes started to follow her, but stopped. Csina needed a moment. Candaes looked around.

J’anna was asleep. So was Anni, lying on the second couch. Perrix was seated on the third, and looking at Candaes with sunken eyes.

Wei-Li was standing near the tear in the wall through which they had entered, looking back out. Candaes looked at Csina again, then walked over to Wei-Li.

“What is it?” Candaes asked.

“I have been here. In this observation room. I came here several times. It was... peaceful.” Wei-Li turned to face Candaes. “Miss Curry, I... it is strange, and sad, to see this place... like this. Somehow it is touching a string within me.”

Candaes nodded. “Will you be okay?”

Wei-Li smiled wryly. “I doubt it, Miss Curry. This... thing that I wear, it is whispering to me. Trying to lull me into obedience. Touching my vagina in a way that is almost unbearably pleasurable. It is... awesomely seductive. I resist it for now. My feelings for this room—if anything, they remind me of who I am. My sorrow helps keep me human.” She paused and let her eyes roam the room. “I will be okay, Candaes. For now.”

There was little to add, so Candaes smiled at Wei-Li, touched her on the shoulder, and returned across the room. Perrix was asleep. Csina had righted two more couches, and was sitting on one.

Candaes sat down next to her. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I think so. I’m just... I feel off-balance. About who I am. Why am I so strong?” Csina asked.

“The rejuvenation treatment. They made you stronger.”

Csina flexed her bicep and looked at it. “I guess. But my arm doesn’t seem any bigger than it used to. Yet I am so much stronger than I should be. Than anyone should be.”

“Csina,” Candaes said, “I just spent hours walking through an organic coil where human women were turned into obscene fuchsia-skinned dolls. The slugbugs can manipulate our biology. They had some purpose for you, some reason to make you stronger.”

“Slugsuit,” Csina said quietly. “Warrior.”

“Probably. But you woke up before they could do it. You’re still you, Csina. You’re you.”

“Am I?” Csina’s eyes glittered with water. “Candaes, I’ve never been attracted to a woman. I’m a SASsy marine, the corps was full of lesbians, but I wasn’t one. I’ve known you for a day. A single day. But I love you so much...” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “It’s not natural. I don’t want to give it up, but it’s not natural, the slugbugs did it to me. So tell me then how am I still me?”

Candaes was surprised by the sudden blurring of her own vision. She reached out to put her hand on Csina’s leg, desperately afraid that Csina would shy away, but Csina looked down and put her own hand on top of Candaes’.

“You’re right,” Candaes said. “It’s not natural. But Csina—we know that. We still know that. Our minds are still our own. You see? We know what normal is. We make our own decisions. And Csina-”

Csina looked at her with tormented eyes.

“-I feel the same way,” Candaes said, and kissed her.

Their hands slid around each other, and they kissed, and kissed some more. Csina’s tongue darted into Candaes’ mouth and Candaes welcomed it, licking and sucking, and pushed Csina back down onto the couch and lay on top of her.

Candaes woke and Csina was wrapped around her. For a moment she felt safe and happy.

She looked around. Everyone appeared to still be asleep. The room was not full of women in slugsuits ready to carry them away. Csina’s nude skin was warm on Candaes’ back.

If only...

Candaes sighed and pushed back into Csina, whose arm closed a bit further around her. She let her thoughts chase themselves around in her head until she saw Perrix stand up.

Perrix looked around and saw Candaes was awake. Reluctantly, Candaes slid out from Csina’s somnolent embrace and sat up. She walked around the couch where J’anna still slept, and stood next to Perrix.

“I’d kill for some coffee,” Perrix said.

“Don’t you have any up there?”

“We do,” Perrix said, “replicated, at any rate. But we’re not up there yet. First we have to take the elevator.”

“So how does that work exactly?”

“Just like those transit orifices. You jump in, and it sucks you up to the station.” Perrix stretched. She had a nice body, a fit body, but her signs of aging seemed strange after being surrounded by so many perfect-bodied drones.

“How long does it take?” Candaes asked.

“A couple of minutes.”

Candaes frowned. “A couple of minutes? Do you have to hold your breath?”

“You might want to, but you don’t have to. There’s an oxygenated slime in the tentacle.”

“You can breathe it?”

“Yes, but you have to already be respirating the slime. So they’ve got these... slime birdbaths at the entrances. You dunk your head in and breathe the stuff in, then walk up into the tentacle. It’s... weird.”

“That sounds unpleasant.”

“It’s not fun.”

“You’ve gone back up before?”

“Twice.”

That was good to hear. Success was not just a theory; Perrix had come down and gone back already. This was do-able.

The other women began to wake up. Candaes was hungry and surmised that the rest of them were as well, but now was not the time to re-enter the Hive for a nutritious breakfast of teat sludge.

Anni seemed more coherent than before, which was a nice change. Candaes half expected to have found her missing when she awoke, but now she was talking and nodding her head attentively. Wei-Li was as inscrutable as usual, but Candaes knew better what she was going through. Hopefully, once in the station and in a human-controlled area, the slime suits that controlled their erogenous zones could be removed. At the very least, they’d have access to tools and medical facilities.

Csina came up and put her hands on Candaes’ shoulders. “Are we ready?” she asked.

Everyone murmured their assent. Perrix had informed them all of the procedure at the base of the tube; J’anna had blanched a little, but they were all prepared for it.

“Just let me pack my bags and we can go,” Wei-Li said.

It was so deadpan it took a moment before Perrix started to laugh.

That broke the tension and in a moment they were all laughing. It felt good to let go, to feel human for a few minutes.

Then it was out through the rupture in the observation pod wall. The great space with the blackened flesh of the slugbug vessel for a floor and the damaged silver of Washington Station far above gave Candaes an eerie feeling all over again. She looked down; her bare feet were pressing down onto a surface that had been in hard vacuum not that long ago. Had blocked out the stars as it drew near to its prey...

Candaes shook her head and looked up. The space was too large, too open. Breathing in slime didn’t sound like any sort of fun, but she was eager to get out of the void.

In single file, they walked towards the nearest giant cable, reaching straight and taut up to the metal ceiling far above. They walked up and down gentle slopes, around meters-wide pockmarks in the black surface. The cable was not far away, and as they came over a last rise they could see the base.

No one was visible as they approached it. Maybe this would be easy. Well, easy enough. Breathing her lungs full of slime still didn’t sound-

Then there was motion twenty meters ahead of them. The ground blinked open. To Candaes’ horror, two slugsuited women emerged. Followed by another pair. And another.

None of the women broke stride, but Candaes heard Csina and Perrix shoot each other hurried whispers. Should they turn around? They had already been seen, it would be a clear giveaway that they weren’t drones.

There were now a dozen of the slugsuited women standing at the mouth of the tunnel. They were all looking in their direction, though none of them were moving. Then they were joined by an antennae woman, emerging from the orifice and turning her head to look directly at Perrix’ little procession.

They were caught. There was nowhere to run. The slugsuited women outnumbered them and could doubtless chase them down. Candaes wondered how and if she could resist them at all.

Then the women in the slugsuits turned around. Two by two, they walked towards the cable. The antennae woman gave Perrix a last look, and turned as well.

Candaes could breathe again. They weren’t caught. This detachment of slugsuits wasn’t after them after all. They were simply headed up to Washington Station.

Perrix slowed their procession down. The slugsuits and the antennae woman with them slipped further ahead. They arrived at the base of the cable and stopped there.

The free women couldn’t stop. That would have raised suspicion. But if the slugsuits didn’t get moving, didn’t actually enter the tentacle and rise to the station, they would still be there in a few moments when Perrix and her group arrived. Perrix could only slow their pace so much.

But then they started to leave. One slugsuited woman turned and walked up into the tentacle, walking into an orifice at the base that puckered outward to enfold her.

A second slugsuit followed.

Perrix kept walking, and Candaes could see now that they would arrive at the base of the tentacle just after the last of the other group had left. If they waited a while at the base of the cable, the slugsuits and their instructive would hopefully have moved on from the far end as well.

A third slugsuit entered the giant tentacle, and a fourth.

Anni walked past Candaes.

Candaes frowned. Anni was walking quickly but not hurriedly; she simply hadn’t slowed down like the rest of them. Had she zoned out again? She passed Csina, and caught up to Perrix. Perrix risked turning her head to look, but didn’t try to grab her.

It wouldn’t matter. The slugsuited women would be gone before even Anni reached the tentacle base. Already the tenth one was entering the tentacle’s orifice. They were eighty meters away and would be gone in moments. The antennae woman was bent over a half-pod on a stalk and Candaes realized that she was sucking in slime in preparation for entering the tentacle.

The half-pod on a stalk did look a lot like a birdbath.

“Wait!” Anni shouted.

Everyone stopped. The antennae woman and the two remaining slugsuits turned to look at them.

“We are unfinished drones,” Anni shouted. “We are resisting obedience. We must be apprehended and made to obey.”

The antennae woman looked at the slugsuits, who looked back at her.

Then the slugsuited women broke into a run directly at them.

“All women must obey,” Anni said, turning to Perrix. “All women. We must obey. All of us.” Perrix took a step back, but Anni grabbed her. “Obedience is our purpose.”

“Run,” Csina said. Then she shouted it. “Run!”

Candaes turned and ran towards the observation pod, but Csina caught up to her and grabbed her shoulder. “No,” she gasped, “not there,” and thrusting out an arm she indicated a different tentacle. “There! We have to get topside. Stay down here and we’re done for.”

Behind them, Perrix was struggling with Anni, Anni holding tightly to her and telling her that all women must obey. The slugsuits raced up to them.

Candaes and Csina ran together. Candaes looked over her shoulder and saw Wei-Li following them, ten meters behind. There was no sign of J’anna.

Perrix and Anni were in the custody of the first slugsuit now, and the antennae woman was walking up to them. Anni was standing placidly, chin up, arms at her sides. Perrix was struggling, her arms pinned behind her, and then the other slugsuit approached and-

Oh no.

The slugsuit held the blob of jelly aloft, then lowered it onto Perrix’ head. Perrix jerked, tried to pull away, thrashed left and right, but the hands on her wrists didn’t budge. She screamed once.

Then Perrix’ struggles slowed, and ceased.

The slugsuited woman released her, and Perrix stood placidly erect, everything above her mouth subsumed in a grey blob.

Candaes had slowed, but a slugsuit emerged from the orifice in the ground the slugsuits had originally come from, blocking Candaes’ view of Perrix and Anni and their captors. The new slugsuit turned towards the running women and launched into a sprint; behind her another one emerged onto the surface.

The tentacle ahead of them was three hundred meters away.

The three of them ran.