The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

A knock came at the door. Alison opened it and admitted a young man with a serving tray. After he placed it in the more common area of the suite, she gave him a tip, and shooed him away.

She took a brief look under the metal covers to see what room service brought was what she ordered. A hotel with upper crust pretensions managed to deliver real food after all, she decided. Placing the covers back in place she walked over to the bed.

Sandi lay there with her eyes closed, still asleep. Alison shook her by the shoulder gently.

“Sandi,” she said, “Wake up. There’s food.”

“oh,” came a waking whisper of sound.

Sandi started to sit up. Her shoes were at the side of the bed. She didn’t remember having taken them off. What she did remember she didn’t like. But she got up, heading to the little couch where the food was. There was steam coming from holes in the top of the metal covers.

“I got some wine too, but I suggest you have some water first,” Alison handed her a glass with water and ice. Sandi sipped from it, the cool liquid easing her sense of dryness.

Alison settled back in her chair, watching Sandi peer under the food covers, setting those aside and picking up a knife and fork. She started eating before Alison started in on her own dish. They were quiet over the food for a bit and each had a glass of wine.

When Sandi finally spoke she sounded resigned.

“You can’t get Connie back, can you?” She was staring out the window at the dark sky and building lights outside. There were clearly spotlights on the clouds in the distance, probably down near the besieged club.

“I am not experienced with the ability as much as Bart is.” Alison looked out at the lit up clouds as well. “I do know someone in New York who might be able to help but I suspect you want an effort before I could reach out to him.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“I think Connie got scrambled up inside. I don’t think she’s gone. I hope she’s not gone. I think she can’t come out.”

“Really?” Sandi smiled slightly. She needed some hope to cling to. “I don’t care if you end up destroying me if you bring her back.”

“Let’s not go there. I don’t know anything for sure. Ideally, if I could fix this the two of you would meld together into one person again without destroying either of you.”

“I am not Connie.”

“Connie is not you either. But you share the same body and brain. I really can’t promise anything at this point. I’m just saying, I need someone with more experience and ability to consult with. I like having the ability, mind you. I have strong attitudes about trying to change people though. It runs into some of my idea of how I should treat other people.”

“You’re a shrink. You use your ability to help people.”

“I do just that. I let people find the paths inside them to being better versions of themselves. If I can. I can’t always. I feel awkward about the people I do control. But honestly, I do enjoy it.”

“You have people you control?”

“Yes and no. I had to...” Alison looked out the window. She might be many things, but lying to a patient was not something she could bring herself to do. “I had a situation I was in. When my ability found me, so to speak, where I needed to neutralize certain? Dammit. I was being watched by some less than friendly people. I didn’t like being spied on. I turned ’em into bodyguards rather than Nosey Parkers for a while.”

“Seems justifiable.”

“It was, still is. Doesn’t change things much. At night when I go to sleep, it still bothers me I forced anyone to do something simply because I can. Think of it however you like. I have a set of standards and a certain tolerance level.”

“It sounds like they were a threat.”

“They were cops.”

“Oh. I see. No. I don’t. They’d arrest me for what I do.”

“They would. What you’ve been doing is bad for your mental well being as well. The act itself puts a weight on you inside. But I do feel the people you killed? The point is there’s a better solution to things than killing people.”

“But I can’t do mental things you can do.”

“Yeah. I’m still trying to figure out how you stay hidden behind Connie most of the time. Split personalities are rare. I would think I’d sense both of you. I get being two people who live in the same head? It’s difficult enough to treat and if one of them is, um”

“Oh, say it. I’m a murderer, an assassin, a serial killer at this point. I don’t get a thrill out of it, or a sense of power. But it’s true.”

“Yes. If the FBI find out, even if you’re gone and Connie is all that’s left, they’ll still think you can have a relapse.”

“I know. I worry now too.”

“Why’s that?”

“If Connie is gone for good, what else can I do, really?”

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it,” Alison said.

“Do you think Bart can help?”

“Even if he can’t, should he fail,” she replied, “I’d like my friend in New York to try before we jump to any conclusions.”

Elaine had slipped down to a place near the ER. Her assumption was the wounded woman had come from the area near the club. Even if she walked in on her own, Elaine concluded the coincidence was too great to be unrelated completely.

She was determined to see if she remembered this person who’d been shot. She felt a need to help anyone else who’d had their lives destroyed by one of the rogue telepaths. There were so many she’d seen in her time as Dean’s plaything, she might know this one.

They had the woman in a bay in the ER. Elaine could see the flurry of people checking on her regularly. She was very curious now. She couldn’t get a good look. She’d have to find a way to get closer. The nurses who managed the area with such critical determination were unlikely to let her stroll around freely.

She noticed they were very active getting additional supplies in place. They were trying to anticipate the worst and hoping for the best it appeared. There was a sense of impending crisis going on, with people moving around quickly, taking notes, doing a lot of talking or nodding. She imagined they weren’t accustomed to large scale events. Probably any clinic and hospital in the city was preparing to host a rush of victims.

Seeing an opportunity when the head nurse called a group of the others to discuss preparations, issue specific instructions, and whatnot, she started to move. The handful of doctors seemed to have moved out to the doors to await arrival of ambulances. Nothing happened yet but the whole place seemed to have an edgy nature at the moment.

With the quiet effort of someone who should belong there, Elaine did a steady walk through towards the entry doors. As she walked by the bay with the woman who’d been shot her cell phone was in her hands, recording sideways. She couldn’t idle anywhere in the ER but if she got a clear image she could examine, she might be able to identify the shooting victim.

She kept walking slowly and patiently through the area. She wondered if the marks on the floor indicated lanes for walking or just gave paths to critical parts of the hospital. It didn’t matter. She kept her mind off what else she was doing and walked past the interns waiting outside. Amazingly, one of them was off to the side smoking up a cloud.

Stress, she guessed.

It took a little time but she walked back around to the main entrance. She decided not to look until she was back in the lounge near Polly. The elevator ride seemed unreasonably slow this time. As she walked in the space her friends were in, they looked up.

“Where the heck did you go? I thought you went to the can,” said Pru.

“I heard the nurses and a doctor talking about another shooting victim downstairs. I wanted to see for myself.”

“You made us nervous. We looked in the rest room for you,” said Lexi, seeming put out Elaine wandered off alone. “We worried. With all that’s been going on?”

“Yeah, I get it. But I wondered if the woman was one of us. I mean, one of those who were enslaved in the club.”

“Oh,” Prudence seemed somewhat mollified by the explanation. “Was she?”

“I don’t know. I only got a brief glimpse of her.”

“So she isn’t one of the, uh, victims.” Jill kind of seemed not to feel too unsettled, but she knew she’d been raped. That it was enjoyable at the time didn’t change what it really was, but she did like the memory of how much she’d liked the sex.

“I don’t know. I did record walking past her so I could look closely.”

“Oh!” Lexi moved close to her, “can I see?”

“You wouldn’t know her, silly.”

“So? You did spy stuff!”

Elaine gave Lexi a long hard look. She shook her head.

“Lexi, sometimes you’re nuts. Did you know that?”

“Yes. But I love you anyway.” Lexi just beamed at her.

Prudence was hiding her laughter behind both hands. Jill was shaking her head, it was just typical Lexi behavior.

Elaine started the video and paused it at a spot where the image almost had the woman’s face defined enough to look at. She scrutinized it a bit. Jill came over to look as well. Jill didn’t recall seeing this woman’s face. Elaine though recognized her immediately and turned her head in disgust.

“OH my gawd.” Elaine was a touch pale.

“What? Who is she?”

“Remember I told you there was a guy in the place who’d been abusing his granddaughter?”

“She’s another of the slaves!” the look of shock on Lexi was as much about the raping as the potential incest involved. “We need to help her.”

“We can’t do anything. She’s in the ER. They’re getting ready as if expecting a major catastrophe.”

“Why would they do that?”

Elaine waved at the TV. “They think everyone in there is a hostage. They have ambulances there already and you can bet they’re pulling in more.”

“Maybe Samuel can help?”

“Let me see if he’s still awake,” Ellie said.

Melody looked back down the hole she’d emerged from. The room she entered was disused storage. They’d walked several hundred yards in the old tunnel. The support pillars in the walkway had been added probably since Jake had the escape route cleaned up.

Jake came the rest of the way up the ladder. He still had a thread on Sean. He’d be yanking it soon to set the large man off. He didn’t say anything to Melody but closed the hidden trap door she’d climbed out of. After doing so, he smashed a fire alarm open near the trap door and pulled it.

No fire alarm came. Melody was curious what he was doing but really, it didn’t matter if it created more confusion for them to get away.

“I wonder how much further we can get before I trigger Sean. But we need to be out of here within fifteen minutes,” he said to her.

“Why’s that?”

“I set charges in there to collapse the tunnel. We wouldn’t want anyone to follow us through there.”

“We should be long gone by then anyway,” she nodded. She understood the fire alarm thing now. He was starting the timer for the explosives.

“I think it’s time to pull the trigger, so to speak.”

Melody grinned. It amused her at the moment knowing Vanessa would be trapped in the building to fight her own way out without Jacob and herself. Jake started to reach out to her hand but she drew back, nervously.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry. I forget myself. I was going to lead you out of here. Absent minded habit I guess.”

“Don’t do that. I don’t want to be touched, you know that.”

“Yes. I do. I forgot in the pressure of the moment. Please forgive me.” Jacob was not used to apologizing but he wanted to have at least one other ally with him. If only to trip and leave behind while he ran.

“Sure.” She got along with him pretty well but there was no reason for him to touch her.

He let the string of control he still held on Sean push a little directive through to wait for about ten minutes then go. That might give them a little time to establish themselves out at street level before the cops reaction time was heightened due to gunfire.

“Come this way,” he said. He started out the door, walking into an empty hallway. It led to an elevator bank with stairs up next to it. He started walking up the stairs.

“Did you have a car near here?” Melody asked.

“Several,” he grinned. “Preparations for a crisis wasn’t intended but it works that way too.”

By the time they reached the car he left prepped there were gunshots in the distance.

Jake smiled. His escape plan seemed to be working.

Agent Thorn sat with his partner in the HPD field headquarters. They had little to do until they heard from Nathan. They decided a break for a cup of coffee was overdue.

They both were pretty tense. Neither had spoken for ten to fifteen minutes.

Waiting for something actionable kept them from leaving the scene at the moment. They were acting on the assumption the man who shot Polly was their serial killer. The telepathy thing just put a twist on the entire matter. They wanted to take him down before he killed again.

“The door is opening a crack,” said one of the officers near the window.

“You don’t think they’ll come out and surrender, do you?” asked Mathers. She had not really intended to say it out loud.

“Attempts to get a phone in to them for communications have been hindered by the telepathy,” replied Thorn, “maybe they’re trying to open a line of communication themselves.”

Thorn edged up to the window, peering out. Mathers wanted to as well but there was limited space there. The local LEO needed access more than she did.

A large man came slowly out the door, looking about at the evident police cars and people in uniform. His hand held a pistol of some sort. It was hard to tell what he was holding without binoculars or a telescope from where they were. Thorn assumed it was an automatic. The muscular thug was cautiously looking up and down the street. The weapons pointed at him were conspicuous.

“He’s not the shooter from this afternoon,” Thorn told the officer. The man nodded and lifted his mic.

“This is Young. Confirmed, more than one armed suspect,” he spoke into it.

A loudspeaker at street level bellowed out, “This is the Police. Put the weapon down and your arms up.”

The thug paid no heed to the command, looking for something specific. The man with the bullhorn repeated the order to disarm. It soon became obvious what he was looking for when he fired the gun at one of the officers exposed slightly behind his cruiser.

That was all it took. A number of shots came from every direction possible as the law enforcement officers ended Sean’s life. The fusillade stopped almost as quickly as it started. The body on the ground was a bloody mess now. The thug was done shooting at people for good.

No one rushed forward to get to the body either. There was no one who felt a need to rush on behalf of the dead. They’d been advised to be wary of explosives and booby traps in this situation. It was as good a reason to give them as any. No one in authority with awareness of the telepaths wanted the besieging cops to know about the telepathic threat.

“I suppose one of us needs to go down to check the body,” said Thorn.

“Without the specialists available?” Mather came back at him. “I don’t think we want anyone to get close enough for the expected retaliation.

“Probably not. But you know that’s not the shooter from this afternoon. It’s starting to look more like a conspiracy or power play within their ranks than one serial killer.”

“Or there are other possibilities.”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe he came out because no one else is left. Maybe he thought he’d be able to leave but realizing so many cops were here he preferred to die than to do jail time. Or maybe this guy was sent out to lure us into trying to clear the building,” Mathers explained, “Could be he was a sacrificial pawn to get us to make a move.”

“A pawn.” Thorn thought for a moment. “That would make sense.”

He turned to officer Young, “Can you check with the team watching the back? See if there’s been any activity there?”

After a brief exchange the man turned back to him, “Nothing new there. You already know your agents have gone in the roof. Three suspects have been led out over the rooftops.”

“That’s good. I’m going to go talk to the captain,” he said. “no one should approach the body or the building until we have a better assessment of the situation.”

Looking down the street he saw a couple EMTs who clearly wanted to get to the man on the ground but were restrained by a uniformed officer. They were becoming less enthused though, looking at the mess in the road.

“This is going to be tough on everyone.” Thorn shook his head. Mathers motioned to him to join her as she started heading out the door.

“Come on John. Time is wasting.”

Samuel glanced in the ER. There were nurses taking care of a patients who came in recently, unrelated to the shooting victim. He spotted several bays with curtains across them to close out the busybodies. After having watched Ellie’s video, he knew which was the one he needed to check.

With confident purpose he walked to that bay. No one approached him even after he slipped through the opening in the curtain. The woman on the gurney appeared to be asleep.

Mia expected the person coming in was another of the interns who came by to check on her periodically. The stranger she saw was not in any of the scrubs the hospital staff used. She closed her eyes quickly and feigned sleep. As she did so she probed him mentally.

Samuel felt the probe and frowned. This woman was not a victim as Elaine thought. Rather, she must have been controlling the older man Elaine claimed she was always with. He gently tapped aside the probe she’d pushed at him.

Her eyes shot open. She looked at him now with his attention obviously on her. He was not a club member she knew. Suddenly fear gripped her. Was this the man in league with the shooter? Or was he the real shooter and the woman merely his pawn?

Samuel considered her from where he stood in the curtain opening. Under her gaze he walked to her left side. Her eyes shifted from surprise to display a measure of determined defiance. It was a marked hostility he could not miss.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You ran across someone you couldn’t control. And they were armed.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” The flat tone of her response accented her glare.

“I’ve heard a little about you,” he looked at how her left arm had been put in a sling and the shoulder was covered in bandages. “I hear you and an old man had a grand old time together down in the Fire Eatersboy club, only? The way it was explained to me, you were the victim, not him.“

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“It seems the story I got was a little backwards,” his brow furrowed. “Hmm. Perhaps it’s a lot more complicated.”

She lay there and knew now he wasn’t a club member. He might be working with the shooter if not the shooter himself, but he was telepathic too. There was no chance he was interested in helping her. He also was acting as though he was a cop.

His eyes opened wider with a sudden realization.

“You like being treated roughly. You found the club trying to locate someone to be the sadist you wanted only to find out you had the ability?”

“I don’t have to talk to you. I get to have a lawyer and stuff,” she told him. She decided to test the theory of him being a cop. He had to show a badge, didn’t he? “Besides, you’re no cop. A cop would identify themselves. You have no authority to bother me.”

He completely ignored her indirect attempt to interrogate him. She remained a bit of a puzzle in his thoughts. He thought about it more. Why was the particular man she had in tow at the club with her?

“Was he really your grandfather?”

Her face betrayed her, revealing he was right. The question was spot on, but she said nothing. That gave way to questions about how her situation started. She had to learn to like being handled roughly from someone. Had her introduction to her masochism been the sadism of her father? An uncle? He was betting on the grandfather himself.

“Where are your parents?”

“My parents are dead. I’m an orphan. Show some respect.”

Then he saw. It wasn’t her father. She came to like this from another man, it was the grandfather.

“To be treated roughly the way you like, you kept a tight hold on the man who taught you to like it. Didn’t you? What really happened to your parents?”

Her face had become a mask of angry resistance but her mind was working overtime. She tried to reach out for a strapping intern or one of the male nurses to come knock this guy off. She considered trying to blast him mentally but since he was obviously a telepath, she couldn’t risk doing so. So she was trying to get some kind of physical help.

It was not going to work. He wasn’t going to cooperate with her desire to use an innocent against him. Every time she tried to reach out to get a hold on someone’s mind, he chopped the effort down.

“Not nice,” he said. “I’m here just talking to you. You’re trying to get someone to attack me.”

“You’re here to kill me!”

“By no means. I have no wish to kill anyone. Where did you get that idea?”

“You’re working with that woman. The one who shot me. You know I couldn’t control her!”

“It was a woman then. So what did you do when you couldn’t control her?” He thought he knew already.

“She shot me, I didn’t do anything to her.”

“I doubt that. So you like it rough. Just how much of a masochist are you? Do you get off on pain a lot? Did this,” he pointed at her shoulder, “seem pleasurable to you?”

“NO! It hurt.” Her anger was giving way to an uncontrolled rage.

“I came here expecting someone needing help. You don’t need sympathy or care. You certainly don’t need help, do you? What to do, what to do. Puzzling question.”

“What do ya think you’re gonna to do?”

“I haven’t made up my mind what to do about you. Maybe I should find the woman with the gun you were talking about and ask her opinion.”

“Leave me alone. You have no authority here,” she turned her head, “NURSE! NURSE! There’s a man in here bothering me!”

He smiled.

Her cries did not disturb or surprise him now. A nurse came into the bay and looked at him. He gave the nurse a nod as she came in. The nurse was perturbed her patient was being bothered. Her posture displayed heat, as if ready to burn his ears off with anger.

“How did you get in here? Why are you bothering my patient? Get the hell out of here!” One of her arms signaled to a couple other people. Mia might not be able to control anyone at the moment, but the hospital staff would do their jobs.

Unless Samuel chose to use his own psionic ability. He believed someone would end up injured if he did. Mia appeared to be too young to understand the need to be judicious.

“We’ll see each other again, I assure you.” Samuel smiled pleasantly, even if she didn’t care for it.

Mia tried to spit in his direction but missed.

He stepped away from her and walked out to find himself being escorted out of ER by a couple buff looking individuals in scrubs. He heard the nurse as he walked away ask Mia if he’d done anything to her.

No, he hadn’t. But he would. Eventually, there would be no choice.

Edward and Bart were on the second floor. They ensured the third floor was clear, and this corridor on the second floor was now secured as well.

“That bunch was irritating.” He meant the men waiting for activity at the rear of the building.

They hadn’t even seen the telepaths. The men were in the office of the loading bay. They sensed their presence with light mind scans while coming down the spiral stairway. The positioning was good enough to sense them and delightfully within proximity without being visible.

It had taken a few minutes of being careful, but Edward cleared one of them, Bart got the other two. The few of them involved were pretty lame talents. It made Bart wonder about the other ones remaining. Were they real threats? Could they be just as weak as these had been?

After clearing out those, they sent them and the thugs they’d been controlling to surrender.

“What do you figure?” said Nathan. “Are they thinning out enough to make a difference? In tackling the main room, I mean.”

“Damn optimist,” said Bart.

“Where do you find these government agents, Bart? He seems eager to have us do his dirty work for him. Maybe we should call it a day and leave?”

“Hey. I can go out there, but I’ll have to shoot people. If that’s the way you want it?”

“No, no,” answered Edward. “I would really very much like not to kill anyone. Even if they shot my aunt. I assure you. Though that does piss me off no end.”

“Don’t let anger control you boy,” said Bart. “Anger causes stupidity.”

“Don’t call me boy, gunslinger,” Edward replied. “I’m no boy and you know it.“

Nathan laughed.

“Calm down you two. I thought you said there were a lot more than there seem to be when we came in the building.”

“Caution, you know. It comes of being a confirmed coward. I inflated my estimates. My original estimates were based on the ones I got pictures of and was able to identify.”

“If you had to be optimistic, how many have we gotten so far?”

“If we go by the pictures and death tally they started out with, about forty total. Paranoia should add about ten to that unless we’re lucky. Give or take a couple. By my count, and I may have this wrong, the shooter took out about six or seven before we started. As far as I know, there were three, maybe four more killed since I arrived here. After that, the only person I know about being shot with any certainty is Edward’s aunt.”

“She took out two of them, erasing their ability,” Edward said.

“I got the one we collected intel from.”

“You left out the one I got in the restaurant.”

“That’s right. There’s also the four this afternoon during your raid for your girlfriend’s roommate.”

“In retrospect, the raid wasn’t terribly bright of me.”

“No worries, it worked. We still have the one’s we’re working on now. Let me try to tally this up, um,” Bart tried to do the math in his head. “With the six we got tonight, that’s twenty-three or twenty-four.”

“Is that right,” Edward started to tally things in his head. “So if we start with your original estimate, we’ve got fifteen or sixteen left?”

“I’m not betting on it. I have a hard time believing I didn’t miss some with the camera. Let’s go with the remote possibility there’s ten more on top of that.”

“I’ll never be done with this, will I?” Edward leaned against the wall. “We’re two people. We need more help.”

“We don’t have more help. We would if we had more time to collect some but we’re out of time. Let’s see what’s in the main room down there, see if we can count how many are lined up waiting for police to crash their party.”

“Okay.” Edward peered out to the balcony, seeing no one, he poked his nose out. The view below was pretty clear, a wedge of people forming a V shape still with the mouth towards the front door. He tried to count but it was obvious there were more than thirty people down there.

He drew back through the door.

“We’re going to have to count the psi capable minds using psi ourselves,” he said after closing the door. “There’s a huge mob down there. If the cops come in they’re going to end up shooting a lot of people to get the bad guys.”

“You can do that?” asked Nathan. “Can you separate the ones with from those without?”

“Knowing which have and which haven’t isn’t hard. It’s keeping a count straight doing so will be tough. They’re all close together in groups. It’s easy to pick them out if we’re close enough. From here we’re going to have to be very cautious. We do not want them aware of us. Surprise has been the only advantage we’ve had so far,” Edward looked over at Bart, “Oh, and experience I guess.”

Bart nodded. “Give me a moment. I’ll try first.”

Bart focused his ability in the direction down and forward to cover the main room below the balcony. As far as he knew, there was no easy way to do this. He had to pick out shields guarding telepaths without triggering reactions. To his benefit, he and Edward had talked about how the first set they’d run across were constantly probing each other. If the ones below did the same, it was possible his scan would be no more likely to trigger a reaction than any other of the members probing.

He could tell such activities were going on. It was akin to looking at a panel of lights with one or another suddenly getting brighter. Since all the sensations of energy blips were pretty much the same he could tell Edward had been right. They were mixed in with all the other minds, not to conceal themselves but probably as shields against physical attacks.

Sorting which were the ones with mental skills was a little tedious. At the moment he wasn’t trying to take control of any of them. He thought it odd as he scanned that he spotted so few.

“That can’t be right.” He muttered loud enough to get Edward and Nathan’s attention.

“What’s that?” asked Edward.

“I only count eight of them. That’s what, half of what I expected to be left?”

“Give me a moment, I’ll try,” Edward started to focus his own senses.

Edward’s effort wasn’t much different from Bart’s. Perhaps he was a bit more aggressive once he learned several of them kept probing each other and their servants. He tried to save a mental location map in his head of where they were standing in the great hall below.

After a time and a bit more watching, he counted up as the energy lit up down there. He’d spotted more than Bart.

“I get thirteen total,” he said. “If we’re really careful and start from the ends with caution, maybe we can crack them open and neutralize them all before any of them are alerted. You have an opinion on that, Bart?”

“Sadly, I think it’s not an option. We either do it or people die. That second choice isn’t good. Any others must not have been here, or had a means of escaping.”

“I’ll start from the right side,” he pointed to one direction, “you start at the left. We can try to get as many possible before they twig to what’s going on.”

“Okay, let’s get started,” Bart started working out his scan to find one to the far left to work with and in an instant was working through shields.

On his side of the hall, Edward was slicing open cracks in the first shield to shut down the parts of the person’s will quickly as possible. He did so with care despite his desire to hurry. Each one of them they turned off would mean reducing the risk from the others. It was tricky, but the first couple he did were relatively weak.

Bart was doing well too, to his surprise. He got through three of them before he ran into one with a shield tough enough to be a problem. He wasn’t finding seams to thread his probes through. In his experience, everyone had seams in their shield if only because of the way the brain itself shaped the energy signal used. A bit like the footprint one gets from a radio antennae being affected by large metal objects in the way, only instead because the brain was the antennae and not shaped smoothly. Detecting those seams were the problem, especially while trying to remain undetected.

Edward ran into a tough one on his fifth subject. This one a woman. Women being less in numbers in the group, they went through more attempts to probe from the others, which in turn drove them to work harder on their shields. Edward didn’t know it was because of the gender but only this one was tougher to crack.

When he finished the last one he’d found, he opened his eyes again.

Nathan looked worried. Seriously worried.

“What is it?” Edward asked, Bart was still engaged in clearing a last one down there. Edward had neutralized but not eliminated the telepathy of the club members. Bart was doing the same but must have run into the toughest of their lot. They would have to burn out the psionic ability after they were all rendered into submission.

“You guys have been still for almost ten minutes and there’s been gunfire.”

“Gunfire?” Edward opened the door to peek down into the room below. Everyone was tense down there but there were no casualties falling on the floor he could see. There was one person down there struggling and holding their head. A mid-sized man in his thirties was struggling to keep his footing and apparently was losing. He was the one Bart was having problems with now.

Edward reached out with his own talent to add to Bartholomew’s effort, trying to give him the best concerted help he could. Apparently the man had detected Bart’s attempt to get in and was fighting back. Bart showed no signs of having serious problems but it was decidedly a test of wills. With Edward adding to the pressure though, Bart was able to break through.

Edward let Bart take a brief break and started flowing a command to sleep through all the people down there, including the ones they managed to take free will from. As soon as they were on the floor he was moving to the stairs on the opposite balcony from where they were.

Nathan followed and as soon as he was steady again, Bart was on their tail.

“We still have to torch their ability,” said Bart to Nathan, “but as soon as we do, the police can come in. You want to call them and let them know we’re almost set for them?”

“Sure, you want them to come in?”

“No, not until we’re done freeing the ones who were bound and burn the talent away from this bunch,” Bart answered. “I think they might like to be comfortable the worst of the threat is over though.”

“You might want to walk through to the kitchen and peek. I don’t think anyone’s left back there, and we’re going to have to explore the lower levels, but I’m willing to bet any others have fled,” said Edward. “What do you think?”

“The three entrances we know about have all been cleared. I suspect we’re just looking for an escape tunnel now.”

As they reached the bottom of the stairs there was a peculiar rumbling sound. Bracing themselves against the walls, they wondered if something was going to collapse. It passed almost as quickly as it started without any evident effects they could determine.

“Let’s start sorting out the culprits from the victims, then prevent these guys from ever being a risk to anyone else.” Edward looked around for his first psi-echtomy.

“Lieutenant,” the captain said. The man turned to him. “Get the city engineers to come talk to me right away.”

The captain knew the rumble they’d felt and heard was no earthquake. He had a feeling there was something else involved. That had the sound of demolitions in the distance but he saw no indications of buildings being destroyed. Not even a cloud of dust and dirt he’d expect in such an event.

Thorn put his phone down and turned to the captain. They were at street level, looking towards Sean’s corpse in front of the club door.

“You can let your people check on him now,” said Thorn. “The people inside are neutralized but don’t let your teams go inside just yet.”

The captain made a signal to his detective. There were a couple more hand signals exchanged and the detective started talking into his radio.

“What’s the story about not going in yet?”

“They’ve neutralized the immediate threat of people getting killed but they want to permanently remove the power from the telepaths they found. Officers rushing in might confuse them with threats still.”

“Oh, that. Yeah. Hang on.” The captain turned to another officer near him. “Let people know we still have friendlies inside the building who are not in uniform. I don’t want any shooting at all now. Stand down some of the team. We just need a few units to go through the building when we can give the all clear.”

“Yes sir,” the officer started talking to the Lieutenant off to the side.

“You know this is all very queer. I don’t know what to tell the press.”

“You’ll tell them you have gotten the active shooter, that he’s dead.” Thorn pointed to the body being marked by the forensics team after the EMTs verified he was dead. There wasn’t much chance he wasn’t given how many rounds had struck him. “We will call it a hostage situation clearing the shooter took care of. You can tell them we have explosive experts going through for booby traps. I’ve been told the people inside will either confess or have no memory of the entire event. Yeah, we’re going to be sending amnesia victims off to specialists.”

Mathers came over holding her phone. “Regional has been watching TV. Imagine that. I told them we’re on site and if we need more help, we’ll call. What’s our status?”

“Mostly everything is under control. They say as far as they know? the uniquely talented individuals inside the building have been accounted for. They also said we’re missing a handful they can’t account for.”

“I see. Their leadership probably turned tail rather than stay for a showdown.”

“I’d bet on it.”

Mia waited only long enough for the strange telepath to be out of sight. She started taking control of a couple nurses to wheel her to the elevator. Her desire was to get out of the building as fast as she could now.

Whatever the man was doing here, he now knew more than she wanted people to know about her. He knew in only a couple minutes of talking too. He didn’t even try scanning her mind. The very fact he hadn’t indicated he wasn’t concerned about her strength.

She was smart enough to know she really did not want to cross paths with the man again. It was essential she find a way to get away. She spotted the police officer who’d been sitting out here in the hallway to wait for her statement. Taking a chance her effort might be noticed she reached out with little slithering controls into his head and had him push the gurney away from the elevator and into what looked to be an empty hallway.

One of the nurses she was controlling unstrapped her from the gurney. She swapped clothing with the nurse so she’d be less noticeable outside the building. Being in a hospital gown simply wouldn’t cut it elsewhere. While she had no idea where the other telepath went, it might be best not to stand out like a sore thumb.

Sometime after adjusting makeup and getting dressed she walked out of the building with the other nurse. The cop she left at the entryway to the hospital. He was directed to keep an eye out for the stranger who visited her. Maybe if he was out here, the cop could intervene for her without too much trouble.

The nurse took her to a car. The name tag she had on said ‘Judy’ but it didn’t matter to Mia at all. Mia didn’t feel safe driving yet, so having a drone who would do it for her was probably the better option. It took a few minutes to get out to the street, but once they did, she let out a sigh of relief.

The hospital would simply have to deal with a disappearing patient with a gunshot wound and a missing nurse. Her problems were more critical to her than theirs by far. She nervously tugged at spots where the clothing she stole was tight along her arms. Pulling at the powder blue scrub she had on brought to mind she still needed better clothing unrelated to the hospital, preferably something fitting her frame without binding.

It didn’t upset her to have tight rather than comfortable things to wear but if she was noticeable for being in something too small, the wrong people could eventually find her. Rather than taking in a shopping expedition she decided to have this nurse driver to her grandfather’s place.

While riding she did notice the other woman’s badge had some more information about where she worked in the hospital. Mia never had taken a woman as a slave. She’d been all about making the guys she did take use her the way she liked. Her experiments with guys never was really successful other than her grandfather, she believed she’d have to find someone to adjust. A lot.

Or. Maybe she could find someone who was already brutal the way she liked. First. She wanted a bath and some food. Her own clothing too.

The car turned into the more affluent neighborhood where her house was. Sure, it had been her grandfather’s house, but he’d transferred it to her name a while back. She hadn’t expected he’d last forever but hoped at least he wouldn’t be gone so fast.

The illusion grandfather was in charge was no longer necessary. The household servants would simply be adjusted to acknowledge their real owner. There were only three of them. She looked around. No, four now. This nurse might be useful for more than just the escape from the hospital. How, she didn’t know, but Mia wasn’t about to cast her aside.

As they pulled into the driveway Mia let out a sigh. Familiarity gave her a sense of safety. Whether the safety was real or not, she didn’t even think about. She wanted a night in her own bed.

Nathan found stairs to the basement. Without asking for help or any backup at all, he made the descent while still confident nothing was likely to be a threat anymore.

It helped a lot that nothing in the basement was a threat. He poked his head in where there were about eight large washers and dryers for laundry in the facility. He doubted they saw much use. Maybe when the place had been a hotel they’d had more utility, but now they were pretty much just so much unused machinery. After processing through all the rooms, he considered returning upstairs.

There was no way in his mind this was all there was to the basement. Something was wrong, hidden. He just hadn’t identified what. He spent some time going over the areas which displayed signs of some use. There were a few storerooms with cases of liquor and bottled beers. He knew they had a freezer off the kitchen for meats. It was unlikely he’d find any similar stores of food down here.

There was one room where the floor was wooden, rather than the concrete he had come to expect from all the other rooms. When he moved through it a few times he noticed a part of it sounded different under his feet. There was a meat hook hanging on the wall nearby. That was out of place completely. It could be an ice hook he supposed. Even then though, where would they have kept the blocks of ice it would be used for?

“Let’s see,” he spoke aloud. This caused Hubert to pop up out of his favored pocket again. “Relax little guy. I’m just looking for a way to leverage this right.”

Jamming the sharp hook into the wood where he’d been walking he felt a slight movement. With a little trial and effort he found a long side to what seemed a rectangular chunk of the floor different from the rest of the floor. He managed to lift up one side a few inches and then it seemed to push itself the rest of the way. The section of floor was a door opening to a set of stairs down. He had suspected as much.

A little searching about led to a light switch made with an old style pair of buttons. Round and worn, who knew if the wiring behind it was bare or insulated even? Some bulbs lit the stairs which ended at the bottom with another doorway.

He entered what seemed to be an old empty barroom with doors to the sides. It looked like something left over from before industrialization. The damn building had to have been built on top of something else. Nathan didn’t know which way to turn. If there was a tunnel at all, it had to have come out of this level somehow.

In addition to a number of normal doors, there was a set of double doors he supposed he could try. Rather than do that right away, he thought those were more likely to lead to a tunnel. That double door thing probably led to what once had been the building’s entrance.

Randomly opening doors he found a few closets. There were a couple bedrooms suitably equipped for a night or so if someone were to stay down here. He found a refrigerator behind one of the doors, inside a number of beer bottles. He’d bet there was enough staples in the fridge and the other closets to get through a week maybe.

After delaying by going through the smaller doors and rooms first, it was time to try the big double door. Only the left side of the paired doors opened. He could see the slide bolts holding the other side closed so if he wanted both opened, he could. There wasn’t a point to it he could see.

He had to turn another switch on. It looked a little melodramatic though. The thing was a double knife switch the size of his hand. Hubert was on his shoulder looking at it curiously.

“Don’t tell me you want to turn it on?” The little furry head shook a no as if he perfectly understood what Nathan was talking about. “Of course not.”

Nathan closed the circuit and fluorescent lights came on. Down a short hall another pair of double doors. He opened it to see lights had come on in here as well, so he stepped in the room. The place was a sizable BDSM dungeon, and as he saw it, pretty medieval with any of a number of nasty torture implements hanging on the far wall. The floor sloped a bit and he could see a drain in the middle. Ringed around it was the signs of old dried blood that had not completely been washed away.

He was glad there were no bodies here for him to have to deal with.

Doing one pass around the perimeter of room left him with no evidence of an escape tunnel and if anything, there was clearly no trap door down from here either. He headed back up. Let the local LEOs go through this part of the place for evidence. Touching anything down here would be useless now.

As he got to the kitchen, his phone started to chime again.

“This is Nathan,” he said.

“Thorn here, can we come in yet?”

“Let me check with the specialists. If so, I think they’d appreciate a little time to leave before they have too much visibility.”

“Sure, I’ll hold.”

Bart and Edward were finishing up with the last of the slaves memories when he came back in.

“How are we doing?” he asked. “Can I let the law enforcement goobers in yet?”

There was a mild squawk from his phone which he ignored with a smile.

“Sure,” Bart said. “I think though we’ll be leaving by the rooftop unless?.”

“Unless what?”

“Did you find the tunnel they used?”

“If there’s a tunnel,” Nathan replied, “which there probably was, I can’t find it. We need to turn loose some forensics types for that.”

“Okay,” Bart turned to Edward, “You ready to go?”

“Sure.” Edward turned to Nathan. “This is your mess now.”

“We didn’t check the front offices over there, did we?”

“No, but we did peek in the door there. I doubt anyone’s in there and the regular cops will find em if there are.”

“You better tell them to hold off. We’ll go check,” Bart said. “Did you check the apartment that’s off the dining room?”

“No, you didn’t tell me about that.”

“I thought I did. When I first came in, there were a couple guards outside the door there.”

Edward was poking his head into the offices, walking in there while Bart and Nathan were chatting.

“I’ll go look,” Nathan said, “You look after your helpful friend there.”

“Sure,” Bart stood up again and walked after Edward.

“Sorry guys, another ten minutes,” he said into the phone, “We just want to clear the entire building for the telepaths first.”

“Sounds good. I take it you’ve gotten most of them though?”

“Yeah, it looks like a number fled through some bolt holes we can’t find. Otherwise, the baddies we were worried about all appear to be down. We just need to check a few more rooms.”

“Give us a call soon.”

“You bet.”