The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A couple hours in the car with his girls made Edward comfortable after the last few days. They’d drive up to the airport in Columbus, done some shopping first at the mall nearby, a place called Easton, then picked up their passenger. He counted himself lucky they hadn’t wanted to drag him through the outlet stores off the highway.

The last rest area on the road before Hurricane was a little patch of green with the usual building housing rest rooms, a map center, and vending machines. Pulling into a space at the back of the building put the car between the lively rustling trees and the small building. The wind was brisk enough to be pleasant without the threat of a storm.

Opening the door for his passenger, he looked around for Bart. Bart was at a picnic table in the back of the small park area designated as part of the rest area. Bart had a woman back there with him. He couldn’t make her out much with Bart blocking the view.

“There he is,” Lexi said, not quite having registered he’d spotted them also.

“I’ll be there shortly,” said Prudence. “My teeth are floating around at the moment.”

“Me too,” said Elaine, “Ice tea wants to be returned to the sea by any means possible.”

Edward led their guest, a woman who seemed to be in her forties towards Bart. The woman had flown in from La Guardia during the morning, and hadn’t complained about the trip. She had dark hair, had dressed casually but had an air of authority about her. Her self confidence about her importance was a strong contrast to the antics of his girls. This was just a fun romp to them. To this woman things seemed to bear a determined course.

Lexi held his hand and clung to his arm as they walked over where Bart seemed to have planted himself. The woman there seemed significantly larger, no, the right description would be taller, and had on running or walking shoes, jeans, a white wind breaker with a dark blouse under it, and a cap seeming to conceal her hair at first, but turned out just to be helping constrain a pony tail.

He recognized her as the tall woman from the shoe store.

“There you are.” Bart turned in his seat. “Edward, this is my new friend Sandi. Sandi, this is Edward, and with him is Lexi...”

“Hi,” Lexi perked up.

“This is Alison,” Bart went on. “Alison is a psychiatrist who I trust, and I think you can too, Sandi. Since you’ve been reluctant to speak to me about the specific cause of your spree, maybe you can talk to her. I suspect I already have a clue though. If you don’t want me to stay so you can speak, I can walk a bit away.”

“I think I’ve seen Sandi before,” said Edward. “The girls dragged me to a shoe store with them recently. I think you were in there.”

Sandi looked up at him. Her head tilted. She thought quietly before speaking.

“You may have seen my sister. It would not surprise me. She likes to go shopping for shoes. She does have a collection. Not as huge as it would be if it was all she did. But she takes a fair amount of space with them.”

“Twins?”

“Enough,” she said sharply. Edward felt he’d just been dismissed. “Bart, if you want, I’ll talk to your friend Alison but you don’t have to leave.”

Alison was already moving to sit beside Bart. She kissed his cheek. “It’s been a couple years, you old fart. What’s this ‘Bart’ thing. I thought it was Robert.”

“Whichever you prefer. I use whatever identification material I have handy officially. Sometimes I can be just nobody. I like it when I get to be nobody. I have to say, you look almost twenty years younger, and the gray is gone. Dyeing it?”

“I figured I’d dye it darker. But the roots seem to be growing back at the original color lately. I’ll have to talk about some things with you later.”

“It’s good to see you looking spry. Sandi here is a nice young woman with some extraordinary skills that,” he smiled at Sandi, “I got to witness first hand.”

Sandi didn’t blush but she did nod at the appreciative tone in his voice. It was good to be recognized for skills. Even though in this case the skills involved being a sniper.

“Sandi, I have a regular practice in New York. If it would be more comfortable, we can find a room somewhere you can sit more comfortably.”

“I like being out in the open at the moment. I am having trouble with the idea of having so many people around, but that too is all to the good.”

“Lexi and I can go do something...”

“No, no,” Sandi said. “I,” she dipped her head just a bit, “just, it isn’t normal for me to have friendly sorts near by.”

Lexi moved around and sat beside Sandi. She slipped the taller woman a friendly but brief hug. Edward settled himself against a tree trunk. Elaine and Prudence were approaching.

“The rest of the entourage. Sandi, this is Ellie and Pru,” said Lexi. “We’re a set. We do our best to make Edward stay busy and make him crazy.”

Elaine and Prudence both laughed as they took up the remaining space at the table. “Yes, it’s a hobby,” said Prudence.

“So Sandi,” Alison said, “do you want to tell me what’s going on? Robert, I mean, Bart,” she looked at him and interrupted herself, “Bart or Robert, you’re going to end up with an identity crisis.”

“Nevermind. I’ve been called all sorts of things. Just don’t call me...”

“Late for Dinner?” threw in Edward. No one even smiled. He really was feeling like his mouth was doing him in again.

Alison cleared her throat. “Robert hasn’t told me a lot, just that you’ve been helping a number of the unfriendly mind control sorts to an early retirement. A final retirement.”

“Oh, goody,” Sandi said, “euphemisms. Retirement? No, I kill them. I hunt them down and extinguish their life. I murder the shits. After what the first one did to Connie I couldn’t let them continue. I thought there was only one at first. I did what I do to protect her. Then another one snapped up Connie and I had to...”

“This Connie, your sister I take it?” asked Dr Moore.

“Yes,” she looked furtively the direction of the cars. “They raped her mind, which let them rape her body and treated her like garbage. I’ve been protecting her since Dad was killed. I have. A long time now.”

“Where is your sister, I’d like to meet her. Maybe I can help her too.”

Edward, being quiet at the moment noticed a shift in the mental space. He’d been quietly watching Elaine and Prudence, enjoying their shapes. They in turn had made eyes at him. Lexi was a little obscured from his view at the moment, or he’d be daydreaming about her too. Their chests lifted in front of them somehow caught his attention in a dreamy way today. There was an almost magnetic affect on his eyes. He wanted to touch them. He looked around to see if there were isolated spots he could slip off to with either Pru or Lexi.

“Connie. uh. I’ll talk to her,” said Sandi, then for some reason she turned and started to stare at Edward. “You’re one of them!”

She started to rise, a look of terror showing in her eyes, but both Prudence and Lexi pulled her back down. “He’s one of what?”

“Hold on, Sandi,” said Elaine. She tried to get Sandi to focus on her though her brow had knitted up with concern. “I know what you mean. He isn’t.”

“But...”

“Sandi, you killed the man who was my one time owner. You set me partly free. Edward has worked hard to set me even more free,” Elaine was pointedly firm about it, in interrupting Sandi, “He has had opportunity to take control to keep me, or Pru, or Lexi for that matter. We’ve actually asked him to. I’m sure you won’t understand that. But. He’s consistently balked at the suggestion. He is not one of them!”

“He was just, he looked at, he was think...” she pulled up short of finishing the thought.

“How would you know what he might be thinking?” asked Doctor Moore. “He was just looking at them, as he has throughout the last couple hours. Affectionately, I might add.”

Edward though turned his own mental alerts up to a high level. He noticed something odd about Sandi. A quick surface scan gave him the immediate impression of someone else being there.

“Hey,” said Edward. “hey!” He was a bit more emphatic.

“What is it Edward?” asked Bart.

“Sandi isn’t Sandi,” he said. His mouth said words the wrong way again. “I mean, Sandi is Sandi but scanning shows a different someone. Not her.”

Sandi’s eyes popped open wide. Bart and Alison both looked at Sandi.

“He’s right,” said Bart. “I don’t know how I missed it. No. I do know how. I’ve been trying not to read her.”

Sandi knew Bart was a telepath. He’d told her up front. It had taken a lot of convincing to get her to meet a psychiatrist since she wasn’t entirely forthcoming about why she was shooting people. More critically, how she knew who to shoot. But Edward coming along with three women in tow who obviously involved directly with him, she felt certain they were under his control. The outburst from Elaine caused her to hesitate.

“How can she do that?” Edward asked Bart. “That’s amazing! She displays no sign of being a psi.”

“Shut up!” Sandi squeezed her eyes closed, twitching. “JUST SHUT UP!”

“Hey,” Alison’s voice was soothing. Her hands were out warning everyone to settle in place, urging them to relax. She kept making lowering motions so they’d sit still. “Easy Sandi. I’m here for you. I need your help to understand. I’m here to listen.”

“He’s controlling them, with his mind!” Sandi acted as if on edge.

“May I?” Bart said to Sandi and Alison in his own calmer tenor voice. Alison nodded, finally Sandi did too.

“Edward’s family were telepaths. His parents taught using the ability on a normal is morally and ethically repugnant. Really. Then he lost his parents at an early age. His aunt and uncle raised him the same way since. They are telepaths too. The family’s rules allow exception for self defense and recently it seems after a lot of thought, it appears they will allow it for prior informed consent.”

“I had to beg him, really beg him, to help me with a fear I had,” Lexi added quickly. “He didn’t want to because he was scared of what it might do to me to have him poke around.”

“And me,” Ellie added. “He’s done a lot to help me. The only way I’d be able to touch him, and I still can’t, is if he took control of me. My mental programming makes it impossible for me. Unless the person owns me.“

“You can’t touch? But Lexi was tou...”

“That’s Lexi. Her problem and mine are different. Prudence wasn’t controlled by a telepath either. Neither of them are controlled the way you mean. That doesn’t mean we don’t want him ourselves,” she ended with an awkward smile and then a wink at Edward. “I’m guessing you got turned off to sex.”

“Sandi, Edward is no threat to you. I’ve been around him for hours. I’m telepathic and he doesn’t even actively scan for threats around him the way I do,” said Alison. “You not being hostile would explain how I missed your odd situation.”

Sandi’s eyes focused on Alison. There was a tension in her eyes of a cornered beast. “Any of you could turn on me at any time.”

Alison sighed. “If we were going to. Think. In all the time now you’ve spent with Bart, has he done anything untoward in regards to you?”

“How would I know if he can alter my mind?” she snapped back.

“Good point,” replied Alison. “You have to take a step towards trust with someone though. Killing people is only going to result in someone killing you eventually.”

“They deserve killing.”

“Maybe. I can’t disagree. Not entirely. But think. Taking psi abilities away and making them live that way, isn’t that punishment too?”

“You can take their ability away? Then why can’t they do that to you?”

“Don’t anyone ever call her stupid. I’ll be the first one to say otherwise,” muttered Edward.

Lexi and Prudence both laughed. Ellie was smiling at Sandi. Sandi turned slightly pink.

“Sandi,” she said, “that’s exactly what Edward did to one of the jerks trying to take me the night we met. When he met me and Pru, I mean.”

“Huh?”

“He took the power away from one of those club sickos. The jerk thought he could seize control of me. Because the other guy who used to control me is dead. At risk of repeating myself, you killed the guy. Thank you. Very much thank you.”

“I see.”

“What’s going on Sandi?” said Alison, “should I take you somewhere private to talk after all?”

“No. No, it’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Sandi. The look of dismay hadn’t completely faded from her face, but she stiffened her back again. It was apparent she wanted to tough it out with people who knew what she’d done. Mostly because they were not judging her. “What had I been saying?”

“You said you’d talk to Connie about talking to me.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” weary words came from Sandi.

“You really have been affected by what happened to her.”

“The animals. They deserved to die. The rest of them do too.”

“Do all telepaths need to die?” Edward asked.

“No.” Sandi looked over at Edward. “No. I’m sorry Edward. There’s no time if I don’t react right away though. Once someone seizes control it’s hideous.”

“To be certain if I’m a good guy or a bad guy? I do get it,” he replied.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to have that happen!?” she snarled in a fury born of pain.

Alison’s eyes narrowed to slits. She found herself wondering.

“Sandi? Look at me. Tell me. What it’s like to have that happen.”

“Connie,” she said quietly.

“You said it happened to Connie. Tell me what it’s like.”

“I,” she seemed frozen in place. “I.”

“You asked if we know what it’s like. I’d like to know.”

Sandi seemed frozen. She wasn’t moving.

“She seems to be broken.” Edward said. “It hurts just seeing her pain. Sandi, Sandi,” he tried to get her attention, “Ellie went through it. I’ve had to soak myself in those memories. Living it through her. I have a reasonable idea what it’s like. I do.”

Sandi shook as if she having a fit of some kind. As though he caused her to relive something.

“Do you think it happened to Sandi too? In addition to Connie?” Lexi asked.

“...nnoo,” came the voice, “it happened, not her.”

“Are you Connie?” asked Alison.

The face looking up at Alison now was softer, different, with tracks down her cheeks. No words came yet. The look slowly transformed. Her lips tenuously stopped trembling and her eyes lifted with a shine to them again.

“Did my sister do something?” she said as she steadied.

“What’s with the dead birds?” Thorn asked.

Nathan looked up and down the street. He shook his head. There had to be a reason for the pigeon corpses. The city would eventually clean this up. Thinking about the team with the city who had such a disgusting job did not improve his mood any.

“Don’t know. It’s strange.” Hubert was quivering against his neck. “Let’s go inside and look around.”

Before the emotional departure with her parents, Susan had given Hubert an extra kiss before he popped back into one of Nathan’s pockets. It was also after she’d given the little critter a couple extra grapes. Nathan wasn’t going to tell her of the little sprat’s protection of her that left a dead telepath at her door.

Hubert being anxious just now told Nathan a lot about the proximity of other telepaths. Nathan looked over his shoulder as he passed the building’s threshold. No one was evident across the street at the Fire Eaters club.

“Seems these first floor doors are all locked,” said Mathers.

She looked down the hallway towards the rear of the building. Thorn turned on his flashlight. The place clearly had leavings from a couple animals and possibly homeless people at one time, but those were all old indications. The dust had accumulated a bit.

“You’d think there’d be footprints if someone was here recently.” Thorn turned a bit looking at the dust covering the concrete floor. “Here’s a door that’s open.”

It was at the end of the hall. Going through it led to a small anteroom with a stairway. A short walk from the base of the stairs was a back door to the building. There was a door frame opposite them with a small circular window and some kind of crossed metal gate behind it.

“I’m betting the elevator hasn’t run in years,” Mathers said.

Nathan tried the door. These quirky old elevators didn’t do the automated opening due to a button being pressed. The handle wouldn’t turn and it didn’t budge when pulled.

“That’s a safe bet,” Nathan said. “The door’s locked.”

“Look at this,” said Thorn, indicating the wall to the side of the rear door.

On on side of the door was a full length mirror. On the other the floor was covered in ragged shards of glass. Light from Thorn’s pocket flash was reflecting off it, showing it had been a mirror. Getting closer, he observed it was different from the hallway they’d entered from.

“No dust on this. Yet.” He looked up. “It’s obvious why it broke.”

“Why’s that?” Nathan had come over to join him.

“Someone was real mad at the mirror for some reason.” He pointed to the group of holes in the wall at about chest height. “Have you seen blood anywhere?”

Mathers got out her flashlight. The pools of light splashed around a bit until Nathan hit a switch by the door. The two fixtures to either side of the door lit up. The other two looked at him as though he’d grown horns.

“I wish I’d thought of that,” said Thorn.

“He is annoying when he does something obvious,” said Mathers. “Hey, where’s your little furball?”

“He’s back in my pocket. Once we got off the street he calmed right down.”

“What’s that about?”

“Apart from being a delightful companion, he’s psi sensitive,” he instinctively touched his pocket to ensure the pocket sloth was still there. “The species has a unique sense about psionic energies. It’s a survival trait where he’s from.”

“You’re saying he senses the telepaths across the street?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of things live where he’s from? You know, to require such an ability?”

“The local predators on his home island use psi powers to lure their prey out into the open.”

Mathers shot him a look of disbelief. What crossed her mind was being in a trance while something indescribable chewed pieces off her.

“I do not want to find out what kind of predator does that.”

“There’s stobor everywhere. Fortunately none of the research folk were harmed by predators, but local lizards and other beasties are venomous or dangerous in other ways.”

“Stobor? What’s a stobor, the predators?”

“Might be, I never heard what they named those things. Stobor was an imaginary dangerous creature a science fiction author made up for pioneers so they’d think about threats more dangerous than themselves. The truth being, nothing is more dangerous than humans. Think of it as an angry wild tiger you need to outwit or he’ll eat you. You’d probably find the island exhilarating.”

“Nothing I want to experience, thank you very much,” she said.

“I don’t see blood anywhere. There’s been plenty of foot traffic to disturb the dust here though. Whoever it was must have been coming and going by this door.” Said the other FBI agent. Thorn had opened the door and stepped partly through. Demonstrating the door wasn’t locked any more here than the one in the front only accented this building’s usefulness. Easy access and across from the Fire Eaters, someone could set up housekeeping for a lengthy stake-out.

“No blood on the stairs either. If anyone was shot here, I don’t see signs of anyone being hit.”

Mathers held up a cartridge casing on the end of a pen. She looked around and found a couple more. Thorn opened an evidence bag for her to deposit them in.

“More forty cal,” she said. “Maybe a match for the one at the library?”

“Sounds like another one of your safe bets to me,” said Nathan.

Making a snorting sound, she straightened up.

“I guess we’re making the rounds.” She walked up the stairs with the two men behind her.

Jacob felt pushed.

It didn’t seem necessary. Examining the weapons in the case, he had the man behind the counter pick two for him. He tapped the man’s brain to learn the necessary procedures for loading, cleaning, general use. There wasn’t any way to pick up the skill and muscle memory to be good with them without personal practice.

Discovering doing such practice was required came about as the result of trying to learn how to play the piano. Sucking the knowledge and technical understanding from the head of a professional piano player merely resulted in him knowing details without skill. For him at least it wasn’t part of the talent.

Eventually he had practiced piano enough to be able to play. He got pretty decent at it, but realized to maintain the skill he’d have to keep muscle memory going. The mental powers didn’t seem to do that for him. At least, he never found a way to fix muscle memory to play the chords right.

Playing chords would not help him successfully use these guns under duress either. Killing people wasn’t a problem. Bodies in his wake were not numerous but they had dropped on occasion. Using women up was something he enjoyed more. Leaving them damaged where he’d taken them was far more pleasurable to him. Compared to killing anyway. Wasting any opportunity for experiencing women as toys was not as fun.

As a telepath he knew he was individually stronger than the other members of club. Collectively, the group never cooperated well so he could simply dominate the group one at a time. Until the death of Abernathy, he’d been certain he was the strongest of the lot. Now though, Abernathy’s daughter appeared to be damn powerful after all.

Spending an hour on the shooting range allowed him to feel confident he could hit an unmoving target at twenty yards. Getting more than a couple of a the rounds of a clip in the middle of the target was difficult but he was getting there.

Relying purely on his mental powers to deal with the killings was undesirable. Putting a bullet in the killer was as useful as burning their brain out. Once he found the killer. Then he’d have to deal with the others in a more practical sense.

There was no strict center of town in Hurricane. The city sprawled out a bit with residential neighborhoods with single family homes among the taller buildings. In places the buildings were forty stories, giving small canyons of gray urban area with parking lots half full of late model cars.

Some areas were rust belt leavings, with slow economic recovery underway in spots. Empty factories and relocated shipping centers, abandoned rail lines overgrown with weeds and softwood starter trees were surrounded by highway asphalt. The sound of cars and trucks driving by was loud rolling off the raised berm.

Polly and Samuel lived out in a bedroom community along the city’s outer belt. They were used to the drive into what had been an abandoned factory area to reach Edward’s home. A common rust belt area with abandoned rail lines and poorly maintained roadways. It had been. Now there were a number of little artist facilities, welders, sculptors, glass blowers, ceramic arts, and among them included some with legally permitted residences. Such as the building Edward owned and lived in.

Polly was sitting in her car outside his home. The parking at his building was a small gravel lot rutted in some spots and with some deep potholes. There’d never been enough traffic to the place to justify spending a lot on fixing it. Yet, anyway. There was a panel truck out front belonging to the people who rented the ground floor.

On the opposite side of the truck was another car with two people in it. Both of them telepaths. Polly knew. She could sense them. She felt it as she was driving up, and had immediately prepared so she could get closer.

It was within her abilities to cloak her mind in a false persona keeping them from thinking she was anything other than a customer for the business or artist on the first floor. So they were only barely aware she was present. Clearly they were not looking for her. As far as she could tell, they were both relatively young men.

There had been some kind of heated discussion going on between them as she’d pulled into the parking space.

Polly slowly started to slip little strings of control into their heads. The most important element of doing so mandated neither of them notice. Getting into them individually would have been a challenge for most telepaths. Doing both at the same time was far more difficult.

First she wanted to ensure they couldn’t harm anyone before she looked too deeply at why they were here. It had to be to find Edward and his lady friends anyway. There was no other logical reason for the pair of strange telepaths to be in his parking lot.

She managed to entwine little snippets of restraining controls into their cognitive centers, the conscious parts of their minds and sapping out any of the unconsciously managed reaction areas. Piece by piece she latched little hooks in she could tug to make them behave as she wanted. Doing so being more subtle than the brute force overwhelming of someone’s will the way they themselves were used to.

Sleep overcame both of them, a dangling trance like state. They closed their eyes as she required of them. There was no reason to have them record anything about her even subconsciously with their presently unseeing eyes.

“This is Samuel, leave a message at the tone,” was what she got on her husband’s phone. She was going to ask for his thoughts in how to deal with these two. She was thinking of just wiping them of telepathy and their ability to remember their lives since becoming telepathic. They’d lose about four or five years of memory that way.

It occurred to her they were at the moment a great source of information. Interrogating them wasn’t even necessary. She noted someone managed to glom onto a photo by digging through what had to be security videos. Images of Edward, Lexi, Prudence and Elaine were what they’d been working from.

The pictures could not be good for Edward. Or for Elaine, Ellie being the one person the club members actually knew. One of them was bound to recognize Elaine eventually. As she probed, she was relieved only slightly no one had connected names to the faces. Someone did manage to tie Edwards building to them though.

Soon enough she found they’d been arguing about calling the man they knew as Jake. Their presence was the result of going through information available on video and an attendant’s mind there. One of them was convinced this had nothing to do with the killer of their members. He was of the opinion the thing with Ferguson was probably his own fault, tangling with another telepath stronger than himself. Hal? He was a dick, who cared what happened to him. This telepath, named Mitch, insisted there was no point to bothering another telepath.

The other one, named Carey, was of the opinion doing away with any competition was worth doing. As she snooped through his head, it was apparent Carey would be happy to have Mitch fall victim to either of the alleged threats. He hadn’t been around to see any of the bodies drop. His take was it could all be a big fraud for Jake, Vanessa, or Jonathan to get rid of everyone else. He’d joined so he’d know his competition, having never bought into the idea everyone could live with each other and work out rules to avoid poaching from each other.

Polly shook her head. If these two were representative of the membership, the group wasn’t as big a threat as she had thought. Infighting was common among wild talents. They each wanted to impose themselves as the Alpha in the group. Gatherings of wild talents, this being her third experience of the sort, tended to act more like a wolf pack than like people. They all wanted to be in charge, but if they couldn’t be, they’d keep pushing the leader to take his place.

She shook her head and dialed the phone again. At least she had the two under control at the moment.

“This is Bart,” came the voice on the phone.

“I’ve got two hostiles who came visiting Edward’s place.”

“Damn. How did they find his place?”

“They’ve got pictures from surveillance video along the route from the restaurant.”

“I thought he managed to get all of that, erased at the bar.”

“He probably got what was at the bar but they must have picked up from another camera. Maybe something down the street or where he was parked. Either way, the image has Elaine in it clear enough to be recognized. Her experience with Dean was something those in the group knew about.”

A sigh came from the other end. “Okay. We’ll have to meet somewhere different now. Did you do something with the two you have?”

“I was considering whether to just castrate their power and wipe them, or plant something in their head so they never found the place.”

“If they found it, someone else will too. It is my opinion we’re better off with two less in their crew.”

“Okay, castrate and forget it is. You still think Edward’s place is compromised though?”

“Yes, I do. Do you have any ideas where we should gather?”

“The archive has a number of rooms for people. It’s somewhat intended to provide some survivalist like safety. You want to meet there? I think we could easily host twenty or so in it.”

“At least three of these are non-psi and under no one’s control.”

“They are Edward’s friends. I will not deny them safety.”

“Access to the archives though?”

“You’re not a member of the families and you have access. It doesn’t matter. Unless something odd happens, it’s going to be fine.”

“We also have the killer here.”

“You found her?”

“Her, and her ‘sister’.”

“There’s two of them?”

“No. Only one,” a pause from him, “she has multiple personality disorder.”

“Oh! That could make it hard for someone to get and keep control of her.”

“She had us all fooled too, at first. It makes finding her as a threat psionically difficult too.”

“You and Edward, yeah, he’s cautious and you were going to try making nice.”

“And Alison. Edward caught onto it first though.”

“Alison? Who is Alison?”

“Dr Alison Moore, from New York. I brought her in to help with some of the amnesia cases, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up,” he paused. “I asked her to help get our killer to stop killing people. It’s easy to forgive her killing the black hats. It just isn’t a good idea to leave someone thinking killing is an answer to everything though. I thought we’d find out why she was doing it, and maybe be able to fix that.”

“So you got the two of them talking. The good doctor found out our killer was schizo though.”

“Edward was the first to catch on. But schizo, yes. One side protecting the other by killing threats. It explains why they hadn’t detected her as a threat. She wasn’t one until she switched personalities. Even then, they’d see the personality that wasn’t a threat.”

“Not an easy thing to work with then.”

“She is more reasonable than you’d expect. Especially for someone who thought all telepaths should be killed. Sandi, the killer personality, now seems to be okay with the idea of good guy telepaths. Connie, the other personality, seems to have a certain little girl innocence unaware of much other than having a sister who gets in trouble sometimes. That she is the sister is kind of not something she fully perceives yet.“

“Okay.” She looked around. “I better get any information about the membership from these two I can before I set them loose again. Then, I guess we’re meeting at the Archives.”

“Until then,” Bart rang off.

She followed their car, having them drive to their last point of contact with their companions. It only took a few minutes to get to the gas station where they’d gotten the lead to Edward’s apartment. Er, his loft. She found the attendant they’d talked to and cleared memory of where Edward lived from the young woman’s mind. She also cleared a little trigger to go visit one of the two young mind controllers later. She could go on with her life unfettered by these two at least. With a little effort Polly managed to remove all the surveillance video.

It took the better part of two hours to scour through the two miscreants’ skulls for useful information about the Fire Eaters and this Jake character. With extra effort she found where the ability resided in them.

The human brain operates electrically on what has been estimated to be around twenty watts. Each neuron is estimated to generate seventy millivolts. Give or take some of course. Normal human energy comes from the use of glucose and oxygen, which together with a few chemical steps produce adenosine triphosphate, the high energy source within pretty much all life forms on Earth. Producing energy for psionic activity came from a significantly different source.

This is fortunate because if the energy for psi came from the same source the biology uses for power then all sorts of things a human needs to survive would lose power and be gone. Little things like keeping the heart pumping, breathing, using muscles, vision, the entire nervous system in fact. Riding on top of this though within the psionics was an impossible to decipher mechanism within the nervous system which drew on energy from an as yet undetermined source.

Polly knew physicists had yet to pull together a single unified field theory to explain some aspects of the universe clearly demonstrated to exist. The discussions about gravity alone was enough to make the head spin. Among the well educated, informed psionic physicists, there was a theory there had to be an extra dimension psionics drew on, one additional dimension as yet to be described. String theory was clearly missing it, and membrane theory probably was missing it.

Still, the best physicists were not psionic. They had little or no clue to the ability of the mind powers used by telepaths. The vast majority of them saw telepathy as fantasy. The biologists out there hadn’t identified any aspect of telepaths making them physically distinct from non-telepaths. Even telepaths had no clue what made them different.

A rare few like Edward, Polly, or Bart even, could locate the psionic structures in someone else and deactivate them. It wasn’t just a deactivation though. They’d never be able to turn it back on. The method they used was more akin to cauterizing the parts of the telepath’s brain able to function telepathically. Forcing enough energy from the psionic energy source through tended to burn out the bits within neuro structures capable of drawing psionic power. The telepath used-to-be would no longer be able to tap into the membrane of the universe’s psionic energy, rendering them incapable of manipulating it any longer.

Oddly enough, it didn’t alter the ability to affect the no longer psionic individual telepathically. One might have thought with the internal transformer completely gone, the outside influence would be gone with it. Not so. It seemed the transformer was only needed to manage energy in the person who actually was the telepath.

She began by searing out those bits she found were able to connect to psi energy directly. Mitch and Carey were shortly incapable of using telepathy. Now they would forever only be capable of normal human mental behavior. Whatever normal might be considered to be, anyway. Then she excised the memories they collected from others while being telepathic. She decided to leave them with the memory they had once been telepathic and abused the ability.

The human brain stores memories everywhere.

Anywhere there is brain tissue, some glimmering piece of a bit of memory could be present. So excising memories was more complicated, to Polly’s thought on the matter, than anything having to do with turning off telepathic ability. It was a simple matter to her to kill off their telepathy, but sorting through their memories since they had the ability was more painstaking.

It wasn’t particularly pleasant either.

Both of them gleefully rampaged through the female population, their actions more a behavior of special entitlement over others than anything else. There was more than a fair share of sadism involved too. There was obviously a special joy they both took from being sadistic towards women and cruel to men they didn’t like. They’d rendered a number of men impotent who had been boyfriends of women they coveted. She also discovered both of them had a deep strain of homophobia. Even with the ability to potentially understand what a gay man went through, they just exuded hatred and disgust.

That made her sad too. Understanding took one a long ways towards being capable of empathy, as she saw it.

She thought about wiping the homophobia so they’d behave better towards gays. Then she had another thought. She really did want to punish them. Though Polly was pretty laid back about punishment, preferring rehabilitation, she was growing to truly despise these two. Given time to think about it, she realized she’d probably feel the same about all the wild talent displaying hateful behavior over a duration of time. These two never gave a thought to how their behavior harmed others.

Harming others being a normal action of humans, she could forgive some actions. Patterns spanning so many years made her feel filthy from having to scan them. She so wanted to really seriously punish them, not simply take away their ability to do harm. She wanted a punishment to fit their particular sickness.

She came up with an idea. After wiping any stolen memories, and having wiped their ability to use telepathy, she finally made them incapable of harming anyone who was gay, but let them keep the deep seated hatred and disdain for homosexuality. Her action was rather cruel, she told herself, but she didn’t much care when it came to these two.

They would now constantly need to seek out a new partner of their own gender to have sex with. They could sate the need by acting on it, but it would build up again painfully again until they managed to find a different person who they could pleasure and be fucked by. They wouldn’t be able to turn off the hatred and now be completely unable to loose the hate on others. But they’d feel it inside.

Cruel, yes. But Polly was certain these two deserved their own self loathing more than any other punishment she could come up with.

When she drove away, she felt self satisfied with the punishment she’d chosen.

“They came here, but aren’t here now,” said Melody to the young man. His name wasn Peter and they had been partnered. She had a certain level of disgust having to deal with anyone male, even another telepath, but she had promised Jacob to do her part. It just meant swallowing some of her pride. It helped, her sense she could probably crush Peter with her ability if she had cause to.

“I think looking around might be a good idea. Though we could just wait in case they come back.”

“Waiting might be the best plan. Why don’t you check the other rooms. I’m going to have something to drink.” She opened the fridge and found some juice bottles. He’d walked out of the room while she sifted through to see what her choices were.

She rattled about in the fridge a couple minutes before she settled down on the couch. It was quiet a few minutes then she heard the sounds of grunting and moaning coming from the room Peter had gone in. She grimaced as she realized what was going on. Peter had found a woman in there. Being such a pig he chose to take her on the spot. Melody shook her head. Men were such predictable animals.

Not that she cared about the other woman, whoever she was. The woman was in the path they were following, so Melody should have expected Peter would take advantage of the opportunity. They hadn’t come across any hunks she was interested in or she would be the one having fun. She was a lioness looking for prey after all, not a farm animal. The other woman was prey.

After about twenty minutes, Peter came out followed by a young redhead. The girl had enough freckles to be all too cute. Her cleavage was pronounced though she had some Rubenesque qualities to her. The skirt she had on ended halfway between her knees and hips, the top let her bra and subsequently nipples be seen through it. She was smiling happily as though she’d wanted Peter to come in and use her for his pleasure.

At that point a cell phone on the kitchen counter went off. Melody ignored Peter and the woman to answer the girl’s cell phone. The thing identified the caller as someone named Lexi.

“She can’t come to the phone right now, Lexi. She’s busy,” she said.

“Who is this!?” the voice came back at her. “Where’s Jill?”

“Jill? Oh, the redhead.” Melody looked over at Jill. She chuckled as she realized the girl still had some jizz on her throat. “Hey, Jill, you have some cum on your throat still. You should clean it up before we leave.” She pulled the phone back up so she could speak to it.

“She’s going to visit us for a bit. Until you and your friends explain what happened the other night at Holly’s.”

“Let her go, she has nothing to do with any of you!”

“Oh sweety. Sure she does. Unless you’re like her, you know just what she has to do with us.”

“Let my friend go.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll keep the phone. You and your other friends can come visit to explain yourselves to me. Then maybe I’ll ask Peter to let her go. But you know something?”

“What?!” The voice was clearly angry.

“She wants to belong to Peter now,” she turned towards Jill, “don’t ya honey.”

She might hate Peter normally, but for once he was being useful, laughing audibly in the background. That ought to really get the attention of the girl on the phone. Maybe it would lead them to the folk they’d been searching for. In her opinion, the chances had just become stronger.

“Let her go.”

Melody hung up the phone. “She was getting boring. Maybe with some time she’ll come up with a better answer. Let’s take Jill here to visit Jacob.”

“Okay, but I’m keeping her. She’s my toy now.”

“You know I only do guys, asshole. I don’t care if you keep her or not.”

“Right. Gotcha.” He ran his hand over Jill’s boobs. “Nice little toy too. I always wanted my very own redhead.”

“Let’s go.”

They didn’t even bother to close the door as they walked out. The property manager didn’t know what to do. They didn’t tell him to close up after them, all they’d done was order him to open the door and wait. He stood there stupidly with no idea what he was supposed to do. He was left behind but they had not left him enough will to be self determining at the moment.

He stood by the open door, numbly, just waiting for instruction.

Edward slapped his hands together as though he was batting off any dust or dirt he’d acquired. He was coming out of the back office to the stacks in the bookstore, looking for the women folk. He shortly found both Prudence and Elaine in a do it yourself section. They seemed to be looking at crafts books, particularly knitting books.

Polly must have been a bad influence on them. He tried not to take it personally.

“Where’s Lexi,” asked Edward.

“I don’t know,” replied Prudence. Elaine shook her head.

“She was going to call her roommate. I guess she wanted to pick something up outside?”

“From here? Wait, her roomie? Jill?”

“Never met her but I thought she’d said Jill, yes.”

“Good grief. Okay, whatever books you’re interested in, grab a handful. I’m going to settle you in down within the archive. I’d prefer no one be able to find you who doesn’t know it’s there.”

“Archive? Been keeping secrets big guy?”

“Not my secrets to share but I’ve been told you are accepted in the circle of those in the know. My aunt and uncle have pull.”

“Cool,” said Prudence. “Like, totally copacetic and very highly? something or other wonderful.”

“Lexi might have said Excelsior!” he replied.

He led them back to the office where he had shifted the desk a bit and lifted the throw rug. An opening downward with a set of stairs wide enough for two descended beneath the office. The stairs led down what seemed forever. It really was only about three stories down. He opened the door at the bottom landing and led them in.

The entry area seemed like a large vestibule. There were lockers for coats and things, nothing lockable. If you got this far, it seemed, you were trusted not to be pawing through other people’s coats. He led them to the next door and in.

The room beyond was filled with arm chairs, recliners, lined with bookshelves. The books on the shelves appeared to be hand written with names on the edges. When Elaine got closer, she noticed the books had names and dates as if it was listing who it was about for what period. There were a lot of books like that, she turned and looked at Edward.

“One per family?”

“Not really. People bring their own records and are allowed to fill their own book up as they wish. Some of those are for individuals, some for entire families, in some cases it’s a township record. Nothing is actually organized much. I know it looks like a huge amount of records. If I had to guess, only about ten percent of those books have much in them at all.”

He opened one door to display a relatively pedestrian looking hallway. Even dorms had more personality to them it did.

“This has bedrooms with baths between every two rooms. They’re a lot better than the hallway might lead you to believe. I normally use the first one on the right if I sleep here, a very rare thing. You two can crash there, or if you’re crazy and want, pick out two other rooms. I’d go with you guys staying with me and the room adjoining through the bath. Mostly because I’m selfish and like having you near me. But whatever you want.”

Pru came up and gave him a light kiss. Then she kissed him a second time. “That’s for Ellie until she can do it herself.”

Elaine let out a chuckle.

“mmm. You’re both wonders of nature. I’ve got to go see what in the blazes happened with Lexi. I suspect she went to check on her roommate in person. Without me she might end up having a problem and I would be very angry if she did.”

Elaine giggled a little. “Sure, you angry. I haven’t seen it yet. Disturbed maybe, but not angry.”

“pffft,” he replied.

Then he took Elaine’s hand and drew her into a hug, though he could see the fear in her eyes. He knew she was anticipating pain. He kissed her lips with a little bit of time to explore past with his tongue. He let out a contented noise, her eyes popped open wide.

“Wait, when did? did you fix it all?”

“It’s not all fixed, but I wanted so badly to be able to kiss you without,” he paused, “you know.”

“Oh wonderful!” Prudence was hopping up and down.

“I could really get used to those kisses, buster.” Elaine ran a hand over his chest but then drew back. “Ah, apparently you haven’t gotten to all of it yet.”

“In time. I won’t give up on you.”

Prudence let her widest smile show but grabbed Elaine’s hand to check out the rooms.

“Oh, and the kitchen is through the door opposite this hall, in the? oh never mind. You’ll find it.” They had managed to close the bedroom door, probably out of earshot by now.

He wondered if Dr. Moore was keeping Sandi at the hotel with her, or if the two of them would end up joining the mob burrowing in here. He closed the door at the bottom of the stairs and went back to the office. After getting everything back in place he headed out the front door.

Lexi had indeed gone to find out what happened to Jill at their apartment. She found the building manager standing at the door, looking lost. The door was open.

It was only after searching every room twice she was convinced Jill was gone. Lexi was scared. What could she do for her long time friend? She now had a clue how awful the people who took her could be. It terrified her to think Jill was going through such a transformation to satisfy some ape with the culture of a sewer.

She started to close the door so she could clean up and get some time to think when Edward called her name. He was down the hall and walking towards her. She ran to him and wrapped her arms about him, starting to cry.

“They have Jill,” her voice was catching and she was trying not to sob, “they have Jill.”

“Let me worry about that. Okay? Who is this guy standing outside your apartment in his underwear?”

“He’s the building manager. They must have gotten him to open the door. Why is he still standing there?”

“I see, they never gave him instructions to go back to what he was doing. I’ll fix that. Shouldn’t be a moment.”

She stopped by the door with him while he did something to release the man who then simply walked off. The building manager would wake up again in his office or apartment, confused as hell but none the wiser for having been up here.

He closed the door behind him as he walked Lexi into her apartment. He wanted an explanation of what she knew before he acted on anything. He still was going to install her in the archives as well before he wandered off too.