The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Discipline and Reward

A Love Story

Disclaimer: Standard “free porn” disclaimers apply. If you are too young, or don’t like pr0n, or just aren’t into my kinks ... go away.

Chapter 16. In which the hook is baited and the line is cast

There is a rumor. It’s out there, but you have to be filthy rich just to hear it in the first place. The rumor is that for one hundred million, you can fuck a superheroine. The one that went missing. No, not the blonde; they found that one, remember? The other one.

They say she’s tucked away somewhere, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, some place like that. There’s this guy, has some kinda power over her. Like she’s still super strong and shit, but this guy can make her do whatever he says.

And he can take her powers away too. He says some kinda mumbo jumbo magic words and chains her to the floor, and then she’s as weak as a kitten. Well, weak as a normal woman, anyway. And that’s when you take her. That’s when you fuck her, beat her, abuse her, make her beg for mercy, whatever you want. All night long.

Yeah, it’s just a rumor. Helluva story anyway. Helluva stroke fantasy. Sure makes you wish you had a hundred mil to burn, doesn’t it?

* * *

In the bar at the most exclusive hotel in Dubai they saw each other. All these guys, the elite, the powerful, the billionaires, they were a community; they knew each other. The twenty-something software genius had actually been leaving when he noticed the middle-aged oil mogul and decided to stop and chat.

He seemed as if he was bursting to say something, but was trying hard to approach it coyly, obliquely.

“In town for business or pleasure, Faisal?”

“A little of both. What about you, Doug? Strange to see you without your entourage.”

“I’ve been here a couple of weeks, alone. Vacation. Sometimes the groupies just get in the way. No, a little snorkeling, a little sailing, a little hang gliding. Going back tomorrow. You?”

“My last appointment was yesterday. My Alana and I spent the day shopping.”

“I really don’t mean to be, um, insulting, but does the word ‘pussy-whipped’ mean anything to you?”

The older man laughed aloud. “No, young man. It’s her innocence, her excitement. It amuses me. When she gets bored, jaded, when she no longer wants me to take her shopping, that is when I will be done with her.“

The younger man couldn’t think of a good segue from that so he decided to broach the subject directly. “So, ah, there is this rumor about Majestic Woman. Have you heard it?”

“That she is a hundred-million-dollar-a-night whore? Yes, I’ve heard it.”

“It’s true.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. She’s right here in Dubai. I was there two weeks ago, when I first got here. The guy, her handler, her pimp, he’ll let you do anything that’s not likely to kill her.”

“You ... you don’t say.”

“Faisal, I want to show you something. It’s up in my room but I can bring it right down.”

“I’ll wait.”

A few minutes later the younger man returned with what looked like a small duffel bag. Inside, bottles of ink, some needled apparatus.

“It’s a tattooing kit. That Indian pimp of hers actually let me give her a tramp stamp while I was reaming out her ass. ‘Doug Westerberg was here’, with an arrow down to her butt crack. I’ve made an entry in her permanent record now.“

“Very creative, Doug. But her owner is Pakistani, not Indian. ‘Ibrahim Beg’, tall, large man? Definitely Pakistani. Oh, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. I sampled the lady’s pleasures just three nights ago. There is no such tattoo on her back.”

Doug was processing several shocks at once, but the loss of his handiwork was the biggie. “What? No tattoo? Are you sure?”

“Quite certain. I spent a great deal of time admiring that particular part of her ... anatomy. Nice dimples. Perfectly-formed derrière. Clean and unmarked and soft as the day she was born.”

“Damn, I spent almost a million getting an expert to teach me how to use this stuff. Shit.”

“Alas, Doug. I had my disappointment too.” With a smooth practiced motion, Faisal was suddenly holding a three-foot-long telescoping police baton. “This toy was confiscated unfortunately. At least there were some other fun toys laying around.”

“But the tattoo, how did they do it, Faisal? Tattoo removal like that should have left scarring, stitches. Hell, skin graft discoloration!“

“The man can magically remove the superpowers of one of the most powerful supers on Earth. He keeps her trapped and enthralled even when she has powers. And you want to know how he removes a tattoo?“

“You’re right. I guess I’m just disappointed. I mean the woman hasn’t aged in, what, six, seven decades, right? I thought I might be able to hitch a little ride on her immortality, y’know?”

“It was an interesting idea. I applaud you.”

“Yeah. So ... no beat-down stick for you, huh?”

“He was afraid I might accidentally kill her.”

“I heard that! Gotta protect the goose that fucks the golden pricks.”

“Such an elegant turn of phrase you have, Douglas.”

“Whatever. Hey, did you know the price was negotiable?”

“Prices are always negotiable, Doug.”

“C’mon, give. What did you pay?”

“Are we going to compare penis sizes next, Doug? sigh Very well, I paid fifty million.“

“Damn! I paid eighty mil. Shit. Still worth it though.”

“Indeed. The verification phase alone was almost worth the price.”

“Ha! For you maybe. I tried to sucker-punch her. Bruised my knuckles on her solar plexus. But she was a lot more bruised than I was when I was done for the night.“

“Ah. I used a baseball stick—”

“Stick? You mean a baseball ‘bat’?”

“Excuse me. Yes, of course, a baseball bat, that Mister Beg provided. I struck a blow against her knee. It broke in half, the bat, of course, not the leg. He offered to let me use my baton at that point, but I did not wish to damage it. I also made her fly around the room for me. The rest, of course, was only somewhat more mundane sadism, made interesting only by the identity of the subject.“

“Well, your sadism may have been ‘mundane’. Mine was pretty intense. She was bruised, battered, crying, and begging for mercy long before sunrise.“

“Look, Doug ... Alana is waiting for me. I have to go now.”

“Sure, sure. Later.”

* * *

Cindi and I were enjoying a late dinner on the other side of town. I was giving her highlights of Doug and Faisal’s conversation, more or less in real time. I was trying to play down the specifics.

Faisal had been her most recent “client”, and by far her worst in the entire four months. His “mundane sadism” was something the Marquis de Sade himself would have thought high art. And he didn’t even use that much pain. It was mostly a matter of emphasis, of timing, of some ineffable dominance that he just exuded. I had to stay in her head the whole night, talking to her, reassuring her, letting her know how much time had passed so she would know that the end of this horror was coming, however slowly. It was all I could do to keep her from folding completely under Faisal’s onslaught. Hell, it shook me, and I was only an observer.

And it certainly didn’t start or end with Cindi. Faisal’s Alana was waiting for him all right, blindfolded, gagged, and tied in a picture-perfect, but rather uncomfortable, shibari rope binding. It would appear that he had another night of “mundane sadism” ahead of him.

Just mentioning his name made Cindi shiver, but she insisted that I fill her in. She wanted to make sure things were working according to plan.

“So you’re sure he’ll tell Blake when he sees him next week?” Of course, she was talking about the boy genius now, not the middle-aged sheik.

“I don’t see how he can avoid it. He was practically blurting out ‘I fucked Majestic Woman’ as soon as he saw, um, the other guy.”

“Hell, he was so into the idea that he tried to have it permanently printed on my ass. Athena may be a monster, but I was never so glad for her shield as I was the next morning.”

“Me too, babe. Me too. Now, do you really believe Blake will play it cool, or will he turn the boy over to the cops, or worse, to the Wraith.“

“Why would Blake have to get tough with him? Westerberg will spill his guts about the whole thing, without prompting even! Blake’s biggest challenge will be getting a word in edgewise. Besides that, as far as details go, I believe he’ll want to see for himself. I believe he’ll want to see what I’ve gotten myself into, or if it’s even really me, before he does anything. Blake is a very ... hands-on person in some ways. Look, I still think we should just tell him, bring him into the cabal.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No, Cindi. I won’t. It’s dangerous enough that you know.”

“It’s dangerous to try to trick him, My Lord. Even more risky to try to control him.“

“It was dangerous to try to control you too. When did you figure out that the penthouse was in Falkirk?”

“Sometime during the first week, not long after you dropped the dream masquerade.”

“Exactly. At any point after that you could have shown up on my doorstep and tried to kill me, but you didn’t.”

“But that’s diff—”

“Look, you wanted him in the Plan; fine, he’s in the Plan. But he’s not on the planning committee.“

“My Lord ... I am your slave in this, as in all things ...”

I groaned. “Cindi—”

“But I think you should at least be ready to tell him the truth if you have to. At least think about what you would say.”

“Fine. I’ll think about it.”

We were both a bit irritable. We hadn’t been getting enough sleep. That probably deserves some explanation. Greg and Annette were still doing our sleeping for us, but now they were in sync again. They were together in Dubai as Ibrahim and Majestic Woman while Cindi and I used their bodies in Australia. Then they were together in Australia in their own bodies when Cindi and I were in Dubai.

Of course, in both sets of bodies, they were supposed to be doing our sleeping for us. Unfortunately, they’d been spending a fair amount of that sleep time, in both sets of bodies, “getting reacquainted”, by which I mean “fucking like weasels”.

Cindi, “my slave in all things”, thought it was cute and romantic. She didn’t want me to admonish them. So I hadn’t ... yet. Needless to say, we were all a bit cranky.

Cindi was looking at me strangely and nervously. Maybe I was more than “a bit” cranky. And maybe it was from more than just lack of sleep. Watching the woman I loved—how strange it felt to formulate that thought after twelve thousand years—watching her have her skin cut and flayed, her body battered and bruised, her bones broken, a couple of times a month, it was taking its toll ... on me.

It didn’t matter that she would heal as soon as she were unchained. I couldn’t un-see it. I couldn’t un-feel the way I felt when some bastard with more money than morals was beating the shit out of her.

It didn’t matter that she had had more than two millennia of tough, physical, painful, dangerous front-line military experience before she had become a demigoddess. Actually, I was sure that was a great help to her, but it didn’t help me much.

But Cindi was giving me that “My Lord is displeased and I don’t know why” look, which meant that she would be on pins and needles for the rest of the night. We’d be in Falkirk in about four hours and that would be when we would deal with it.

I knew what my problem was, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. My problem was that I couldn’t stand to see her taking this abuse. She could stand it, but I couldn’t. Even Faisal’s “mundane sadism” was fading from her thoughts much quicker than it was from mine. My problem was that I just needed to man up, put on my big boy pants, and execute my part of the Plan half as well as Cindi was executing hers.

I’d have to tell Cindi something when we got to Falkirk. By then I’d have something figured out. Maybe she would demand that I punish her. She had been doing that more frequently lately. I have to admit that it helped some, sick bastard that I am. Somehow it helped her too. Maybe we were both sick. Maybe being the ultimate BDSM pimp-prostitute pair was changing us, and not in a good way. Thank goodness we only averaged one client every two or three weeks. I could barely stand that.

Greg and Annette were actually getting some sleep tonight. In Falkirk they’d already managed six hours of shut-eye. That was already more than their average total sleep time per day per body over the past few months. Rats. Annette was waking up to, um, answer the call of nature. She was already thinking about waking Greg “the best way” when she came back to bed.

No. Not tonight.

«“Annette, don’t do it. Do you want to see what the inside of my dungeon looks like? I’ve done some remodeling, you know?“»

«N-no, Master, please—»

«“Maybe you’d like to start sleeping in the doggie bed again?“»

«Please don’t, Master. Please—»

«“Leave Greg alone and go back to sleep!“»

That little conversation actually made her a bit more wet, but still she obeyed me. When she came back to bed she snuggled back into spooning with Greg. Unconsciously he put an arm around her. She held his hand to her breast but didn’t try for more. Soon she fell back asleep. Good. Maybe Cindi and I would both have our wits about us when we had our talk later.

* * *

After Doug Westerberg gushed about his Dubai experience to Blake Warren it only took two days for Blake’s intermediaries to contact my impossible-to-crack transaction network. It only took one more day to negotiate a price, a date, and a set of ground rules. It was all pretty standard as these things go. But Cindi and I were both so excited we could barely contain ourselves.

In less than two weeks Blake would be standing in front of us as a “client”, trying to figure out what nefarious fate befell his friend Cynthia and how he might possibly save her.

* * *

Fast forward those twelve days. “Tonight,” as Rod Stewart might say, “was the night.” But I must say that Cindi and I were far from certain that everything was going to be alright. There would be a great deal of very serious playacting this evening, by all three of us. Blake had to put on a convincing front as a thrill-seeking playboy billionaire who barely knew Majestic Woman and was willing to be at least as amateurishly sadistic toward her as Doug Westerberg had been. At the same time, he would be trying to gather as much covert surveillance as he could get away with.

Cindi had a much more subtle role to play. She had to convince Blake that she was utterly and unshakably enthralled to “Ibrahim Beg” (me). At the same time, she had to find a subtle way to convince Blake that there might be some looseness in those mental chains, some slim hook of a hope upon which he might hang his dreams of rescuing her. I had looked into Blake’s mind a great deal over the past two weeks. Cindi and I had “improvved” various of scenarios over and over again, based on his plans. She was as ready as she could be.

My role was the most complicated of all. To Blake I had to play the Slavemaster-pimp. I had to be the master-of-ceremonies, the gatekeeper, the showman, the enemy who didn’t know he was the enemy. To Cindi I had to be like the undercover cop’s handler. I had to be the voice in her mind that kept her informed about what was going on in Blake’s head, about what she would need to do or not do. But I was also in the room, so I had to keep Blake off-balance, uncomfortable. I couldn’t give him any time to think. I couldn’t allow him to analyze the situation and probe for holes.

Beyond all that I had to remain above it all. There were schemes within schemes within schemes here. Subterfuge, overlaid with meta-subterfuge, overlaid with meta-meta-subterfuge, and I was the only observer with the perspective to keep track of what was really going on. I definitely had my work cut out for me.

* * *

Late in the afternoon, Blake met my four big uglies in the lobby of his hotel. “Ibrahim Beg” had told both Blake and his escorts that the escorts were wired for sound, but the bug-sweeper in Blake’s watch found nothing. So he risked trying to chat up the muscle, but they were both stone-faced and closed-mouthed. They believed they were wired, whether Blake believed it or not. Blake was not surprised by the black SUV with the dark tinted windows. Perhaps he had been hoping for something a bit more original. The black velvet bag that they tied over his head was not much of a surprise either, although the plastic tube circulating fresh, cool air under the hood was a nice touch. Sixty million bucks did buy some creature comforts apparently.

Of course, this would have been the perfect set up for a kidnapping. Well, except that even goons have families, and, by arrangement, Blake’s people were keeping a watchful eye on those families until Blake was safe in his room tomorrow morning.

He was not surprised that they took a winding path through Dubai. He was only mildly surprised that they managed to disorient him enough that he became lost. The ticking pattern of the watch against his skin told him that the SUV was blocking his backup locators: GPS, eLORAN, TACAN, and local Wi-Fi signals. Blake hadn’t even attempted to bring his LoH communicator. There would not have been any easy way to hide it, even with the Wraith’s holographics, and no way to make it look like anything other than a very high-tech device either. The cursory search they had given him upon boarding the SUV would have turned it up in any case. But that was okay, he still had some tricks up his sleeve.

They arrived in an enclosed garage and the goons escorted his hooded form to the elevator, down, then up, then down, then ... Well, you get the picture. After about a half hour the elevator stopped, they took him through three different heavy doors separated by winding hallways. After they went through the last door they removed his hood.

He was in the “game room” with Majestic Woman and “Ibrahim Beg”. I was standing in front of Blake but off to the side so that he had an unobstructed view. The game room was thirty-by-thirty meters with a high ceiling and no windows. Scattered around the room were all sorts of BDSM toys, dildos, gags, restraints, clamps, flails, canes, whips, ropes, straps. The walls were host to various rings, hooks and other access points. Against the far wall was an over-the-top, luxurious, much-larger-than-king-size bed. The bed was also decorated with a variety of posts, rings, hooks, bars, and the like.

In the middle of the room, in full uniform, Majestic Woman was kneeling, ass touching heels, knees spread, hands upturned and resting on mid-thigh, chest outthrust, head humbly bowed, eyes averted to the floor. At the sight of her Blake’s heart skipped a beat, but he managed to remain outwardly calm.

In Beg’s lightly-accented English, I began. I always felt like some sort of Bond villain at this stage of the proceedings. I had learned to embrace it and ham it up.

“Welcome, Mister Warren. Would you like a beverage?” I gestured with my gun toward the bar. On hearing “Mister Warren”, Majestic Woman gasped and glanced up to meet Blake’s gaze, then flinched and lowered her eyes again.

“Ah, it appears she knows you. That has only happened once before. This may be a most ... interesting night. Your drink, Mister Warren?”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” he replied, striding toward his fallen friend.

I hustled to keep up. “So, bitch, exactly how do you know Blake Warren?”

«This is it. If she has no resistance left, I’m a dead man.», thinks Blake.

She flinched again as if struck. She looked conflicted. “Master ... we ... we met at a charity fundraiser ... in Carthage City ... five ... six ... years ago.”

“Is that all, Majesticunt?”

She shifted nervously.

«Shit, shit, shit.»

“I have seen him at many Legion of Heroes ... events. He is ... a very generous ... benefactor.”

I rounded on Blake now, gun barrel leveled at his head. “Is there a reason that I should trust a friend of the LoH, when I have turned their favorite poster-girl into a whore?”

Cindi flinched again. It was just the right subtle move, like she was trying to resist but couldn’t. She could win an Oscar for this performance.

Blake eyed me levelly and made a show of “trying” to keep his cool. “Look, buddy, I’m a businessman. Publicly, I’m the friend of everything that’s good and wholesome, the LoH included. It’s good PR. But privately ... hell, even not so privately ... do I need to pull out fifteen years of scandal rags that have caught me in various states of undress with some of the hottest cootch in America? In the world? Hey, Majestic Tits, tell your master what I said to you at the last fundraiser you ran as chair.”

Cindi whined, as if terrified, “W-w-what you s-s-s-said?”

“Yeah, you know, about ‘being generous’.”

A pained look crossed her face. This was really risky, but if it worked, Blake was in. “He said that ... if ... if I gave him a ‘good reason’, he could be ‘much more generous’, and then ... then he goosed me.”

Blake had actually played out that scene in front of several reporters, including one who was sniffing uncomfortably close to the Wraith’s secret identity. Blake had paid exorbitant bribes to keep the incident out of the papers too. But it succeeded in killing speculation about Blake and the Wraith.

“Very well. I believe you, Mister Warren.” I lowered the gun. “In point of fact, your reputation precedes you. I must admit that I find your hypocrisy ... refreshing.”

Now that the crisis was over, Blake noticed how everything Cindi had said was the truth, just not the whole truth by several orders of magnitude. «Whatever is going on here, she still has some fight down in there somewhere. She didn’t give me up.»

“Well, Mister Warren. Perhaps you would like to verify her bona fides, hmm? Some of my clients have enjoyed that part of the proceedings even more than ... what comes after.“

“You’ve had fag clients who would rather waste time beating a brick wall than fucking a hot bitch? It takes all kinds I guess. No, I’m sure it’s her.” He reached down under her chin and lifted it up, but only because she cooperated in the lifting. Looking her in the eyes, he added, “It’s clearly her, but I must admit she looks different with fear in her eyes. Better. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you tame this insufferable bitch?”

Now Cindi’s fear threatened to become real. This was just too reminiscent of that night with Ares. «“It’s okay, baby bitch. It’s all gonna be okay. I swear it’s just a coincidence. Just remember, all three of us are putting on an act, but only two of us know that.“»

“Let’s just call it my little ‘trade secret’, Mister Warren. I can be very ... persuasive. So, am I to understand that you waive your contractual right to verify that this is Majestic Woman?”

“I’ve ‘verified’ her to my satisfaction. It’s her.”

“Very well then.”

I turned and spoke sharply to Cindi, a scene that we had played over and over throughout these last few months, ”Worship me, slave!

Jerkily, as if pulled by invisible strings, Majestic Woman crawled to me, planted wet kisses all over my shoes, and begged to serve me in a pitiful, whining voice.

Over her quiet sobs I began my incantation. Not in Urdu or Farsi or Arabic or Hindi. Long ago Cindi had purposely picked an obscure, dead language that we were sure Blake would not recognize. Memorizing an actual “incantation” in an actual language had some actual benefits. It sounded more realistic. I could deliver my lines with great conviction and drama. And if two customers with excellent memories were to happen to compare notes, then the incantation would at least pass the sniff test. As I finished the last few staccato phrases. Cindi jerked back up to her kneeling-sitting position, hands upturned and resting on her thighs, her face a frozen mask of fear.

Casually I walked back and retrieved the chain that was tethered to the floor by the foot of the bed. Then I dragged it back. I muttered another phrase as I padlocked the chain to her collar. Then I uttered one last sneering phrase, smacking her hard across her face to show Blake that her powers were gone.

There was, of course, an interesting double misdirection going on here that had been absent from previous ... transactions. Blake knew that I knew that it was the chain, not the incantation that had removed her powers. But he didn’t know that I knew that he knew that. Take your time with that last sentence. It’ll make sense eventually. In any case, Blake thought that he was one up on me, that he had seen behind the wizard’s curtain so to speak. It gave him confidence that had been badly shaken by my earlier gun play.

So now, with a magician’s flourish, he removed his suit coat and handed it to me. As he did so he incidentally flicked his wrist enough to release three holographically-stealthed dragonfly-sized micro-copter drone video cameras. True to their programming, they located the bed, found good vantage points on the wall, the ceiling, the bedpost, and anchored themselves in place. All done silently and invisibly. Immediately they tracked Majestic Woman and began dumping sound and visuals into the receiver in Blake’s watch.

This guy is good. The only reason I knew about the cameras at all was that I was inside his head. Of course, Cindi had known that he would find some way to record the “session”. His unwitting part in the Plan depended on it. In fact one might say that deploying these bugs was the most important thing Blake had to do all evening. We might all three agree with that statement, but for different reasons of course.

“Mister Warren, for the next eight hours, Majestic Woman is your slave bitch. Enjoy.”

“Are you leaving then?”

“I assumed you had read the contract, Mister Warren,” I said in a puzzled voice, “No, I will remain nearby to protect my ... investment.”

And so the fun began ... “Very well then. Come on, slut.”

Yanking the chain roughly Blake half-dragged her squealing behind him to the bed and threw her onto it.

“Take off that glorified star-spangled teddy, cum bucket. I want to see what kind of whore sixty million dollars buys.”

Cindi was crying, begging him not to hurt her. She nervously and hastily began to remove her uniform.

Looking around the room as she was busy undressing, Blake’s eyes lit upon some toys. «Gotta make this good.» He picked up a riding crop and a pair of nipple clamps connected by a short chain.

“Sit up, slut.”

“Yes, sir.”

WHACK The crop came down hard across her ass. “Yes, who?“

“Y-y-yes, M-m-m-master?”

“Better.”

He clamped down her nipples and pulled the chain, eliciting a sharp yell, “Please don’t hurt me, Master!”

WHACK “Don’t hurt what?“

“M-m-me?”

WHACK “What?“

“Y-y-your s-s-slut?”

WHACK “My what?“

“Y-y-your whore?”

WHACK “My what?“

“Y-y-your ...” She wailed pitifully, “I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“Idiot!” WHACK “You’re” WHACK “a slave” WHACK “say it!“

“Please don’t hurt your slave!”

WHACKWhose slave?“

“Please ... don’t ...”

WHACKWhose slave?“

“Aaah! Master’s slave! Please don’t hurt this slave, Master!”

“Better. Now suck me, bitch.”

Shaking hands loosened Blake’s belt, then unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, which fell to the floor.

Having established his “slave training” theme for the evening, Blake began to put her through her paces: sucking his cock, learning painfully to speak of herself only in the third person, begging for mercy that never comes, taking his cock up her un-lubricated ass with strangely arrhythmic strokes ...

Wait a second ...

Oh my God, He was fucking her in code!

«“Cindi are you getting this?“»

«Got it, My Lord. I have to wait for him to finish the initial sign before I can formulate the counter-sign.»

Until this moment I hadn’t even known that the LoH had a secret code. It just never came up. In their minds I could see this thing of beauty that they would be using to communicate. It was basically a sixty-four-by-sixty-four block of the English alphabet and Kanji characters, including most of the so-called “first five thousand”. So basically a large set of common words and the English alphabet for building other words as needed. The initial call sign included some permutation on the square, but aside from that, the code was just twelve bits per character. Apparently, every LoH member underwent some pretty intense hypnosis training in order to be able to do the code translation on the fly, and to bury even the existence of the code deep in their memories until they needed it.

«Should I pretend I missed it, My Lord?»

«“No, he’s expecting you to get it. Even as far gone as you seem to be. I think you should respond on the first attempt. Actually, this is perfect. You can pretend you are ‘free to communicate’ as long as I can’t tell that you are doing it.“»

It took over a minute for Blake to fuck the initial sign into her, and almost as long for her to moan and screech the counter-sign. But this was the crazy turn of events that neither Cindi nor I had anticipated, though Cindi was kicking herself for not realizing that he would do this.

The code was based on a binary signalling system. That meant that you needed two of “something” to represent “Zero” and “One”. The system was flexible enough that you could mix up the signalling bits, by just re-establishing a new definition of “Zero” and “One”. At the start Blake was using anal thrusts as “Zero” and grunts as “One”. Cindi was using two different pitches of terrified moans in response. But they kept changing the signal, all night long.

This slow-motion conversation was the real event, not the apparent sadomasochistic play that each of them was putting on for the other’s benefit. Over the course of the night, they managed to eek out what would be less than fifteen minutes’ worth of spoken conversation. I was feeding Cindi most of her lines, based on where I wanted Blake to go and not go.

Blake:

Are you okay? What happened to you?

Cindi:

I’m fine, but you are in danger. What were you thinking?

Blake:

You can’t be serious. I want to get you out of here.

Cindi:

I don’t want to leave. I’m not able to want to leave.

Blake:

What does that mean?

Cindi:

I know I’m trapped. But I like it. I need it. Don’t press Blake, or you’ll be trapped too.

Blake:

No, Cynthia. We can get you out of this. You’re not trapped.

Cindi:

No, don’t try it. Or he’ll trap you too. Then he’ll have the whole Legion if he wants it.

Blake:

Why is he doing this? Why whore you out?

Cindi:

He knows that he can’t make me a supervillain. I’d find a way to kill myself first. And the way he captured me made it impossible to do much more than enslave me. I can’t explain it better than that.

Blake:

So who is this guy? How did he capture you?

Cindi:

He’s the one who gave me my collar. He made me tell you he was my boyfriend. I don’t know how he caught me. All I know is that I can’t defy him. I can’t lie to him. I can try to hold back things, but if he presses me he can find out just about anything by making me answer his questions.

Blake:

We’ll get you out.

Cindi:

No, Blake, no. Don’t even try. It’s impossible. I’ve tried everything. If he knew I was talking to you now, he could make me say anything to you, tell you any lie, turn you. This is dangerous, Blake. Dangerous to you! Dangerous to the Legion!

Blake:

No. I can’t leave you like this. I won’t. I’m going to get you out of here.

Cindi:

Now? Tonight?

Blake:

No. It will take some time. But we’ll do it.

Cindi:

No, Blake, don’t. I don’t want to leave. He’s made me not want to leave. If you try to free me he’ll make me fight you. People will get hurt and I guarantee that you won’t be able to deprogram me. It doesn’t work like that.

Blake:

Cynthia. I can’t just leave you here. I can’t.

Cindi:

You have to, Blake. I don’t want to leave. I can’t leave. Please don’t make me fight you. I don’t want to fight you. You are in danger. Right now. If he were to suspect anything, he would own you just as thoroughly as he owns me. I would die if he made me turn you, Blake. Please get out and don’t come back. Please!

Blake:

I’m not abandoning you.

Cindi:

God’s Lightning, Blake! You don’t have a choice. I can tell he’s getting suspicious. You’re not being cruel enough. Your best hope is to convince him that you really want to hurt me. This slave training crap is not working, you need to beat me up. You need to make it good.

Blake:

No, Cynthia. I can only go so far here. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if he kills me.

Cindi:

Blake, you idiot. He won’t kill you! After he’s done with you you won’t even be able to wish he had. Look. Bruise me. Cut me. Break some bones. If you don’t hurt me, your mind won’t be your own when you leave here. That’s if he lets you leave at all. If he finds out we were talking you’ll end up like me or worse. You’ll only be able to wish you could wish you were dead.

* * *

Blake actually had been moderately cruel to her throughout all this. But we had to scare him into stepping up his game. It was nearly dawn when he did manage to break Cindi’s jaw. That caused “Ibrahim Beg” to step in and call a somewhat early halt to the fun, really only cutting less than an hour off of the full contracted eight. Blake made a show of complaining about it, but Cindi had done a pretty good job of making him feel lucky to escape with his mind still intact.

It was time to send Blake, and his recorded three-camera video, back to the hotel.

* * *

Back in Blake’s hotel room, he wasted no time uploading all three video streams from his watch to his laptop. I swapped him into the dungeon immediately. I was in his body, in front of his laptop. Now I just needed to upload these videos to the internet. Three simultaneous seven-hour long Majestic Woman sex tapes. This was going to drive the Amazon Queendom collectively nuts.

Suddenly the screen went blank. Shit! It couldn’t blue-screen on me now! But I wasn’t that lucky. It wasn’t a system crash; it was a trap. The countdown started. Thirty minutes. I probed Blake’s mind in the dungeon quickly. Shit! The countdown was a misdirection. I didn’t have thirty minutes, I had five. And it wasn’t just the computer that would blow up at that point; so would the cyanide capsule in Blake’s small intestine. He had figured out how to protect himself from a mind controller. He had set it up years ago. God how I hated dealing with fucking geniuses!

There was a way Blake could save himself. There was a number he could call on his cell phone. He didn’t even know who would answer. He didn’t know where they would be. He didn’t know what they would ask, but he knew it would be intensely, deeply personal. If he got it right in ten seconds the countdown stopped. If he didn’t get it right in ten seconds, that was it. No second chance. No more countdown. The laptop and the capsule would blow immediately. Sayonara, Blake Warren. Shit! Even I can’t waterboard a true answer guaranteed out of a man in ten seconds.

I swapped him back. I had no choice.

So there he was, back in his room, watching the countdown. Shit! He wasn’t even going to make the phone call. Was he nuts?

«“Okay, Blake. You win this game of chicken. I’ll blink. I’ll turn off the road. I’ll take a knee. But you have to not die. Cin-Cynthia would never forgive me.“»

«First, who the fuck are you?»

«“I’m Cynthia’s lover, the noncombatant. We are running a sting together. Please don’t fuck it up, and please, please don’t kill yourself.“»

«So you’re saying she’s not really under some mind control spell.»

«“No, she’s not. Look we don’t have time. Can we compromise? Can you get your gatekeeper to reset the clock for an hour, maybe two? You can meet with us. Together. If I don’t convince you, then ... you can die right there in front of both of us. Did I mention that she’ll never forgive me?“»

«Now what did you do to me. For a while I was a woman strapped to a table.»

«“I have certain psychic abilities. Not direct mind control. Well, that should be obvious, or I’d just make you make the call. What I mean is that I can read thoughts. I can insert ideas, but you can reject those ideas. I can insert imaginary sensory experience, like this voice, but it’s clearly imaginary and you don’t have to believe it. I can also swap bodies with other minds at will. That is how I got you into that woman’s body while I was in yours, screwing things up royally I might add. Look, you can come meet us in our home. You’ll know where we live. If you think something’s fishy you can ... you can sic Powerhouse on us.“»

«Are you kidding? Sadie has been blaming herself for this whole thing for months. If I told her Cynthia was still alive and in Dubai she’d come here alright. She’d come here to plant a giant smooch right on Cynthia’s lips.»

«Look, Blake. We can catch up with the old gang later, but only if you make that call.»

«Okay, I’ll call.»

Blake called, listened to the question, and answered, “I was five years old. There were thirty-seven pearls on the strand before I broke it. Winston ate three of them. The last one didn’t come out in his poop for four days. When it happened, you sent me to my room for the rest of the day. You also didn’t let me have any desserts for a month.”

The countdown stopped.

On the phone came the rejoinder, “Yes, but Tillie still snuck desserts up to your room every night.”

“You, ah, weren’t supposed to know about that, Mom.”

“Ha! Who do you think put her up to it? She wouldn’t have defied me. I ran that house with an iron fist!”

It was an inside joke. The staff were more like family than employees. He laughed.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m still sorry about that, you know, Mom? ... Oh, and Mom, I’m not completely out of the woods yet. Could you reset the timer for two hours? ... Thanks, Mom, you’re the best.”

On Blake’s computer the countdown started again at “2:00:00”. In Blake’s mind I could see that it was the honest countdown time now. Cindi and I jointly breathed a huge sigh of relief.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later Blake was knocking at the door of our top-two-story penthouse apartment. I answered.

“Mister Warren.”

“Mister Beg.”

“Not really, but the truth is complicated. Oh, um, Cynthia wanted to be locked up so that she could, ah, express herself without hurting you.”

I stepped aside just in time for Cindi to nearly tackle him to the floor with a huge hug.

You ass!” she shouted in his face, “You are officially not allowed to kill yourself for me. Do you understand? I’m still not ‘in distress’, our little playacting from last night notwithstanding. You are not fucking allowed to fall on your sword.“

“Well,” replies Blake, “I’m still not sure I’m really talking to you.” He was beginning to start the initial sequence of the code.

“Don’t bother with the code,” I laughed, “or would you like me to quote you a complete transcript of your last coded conversation? Let me see, I think it started with ‘Are you okay?’.”

“Blake, I told him not to do it this way. I told him to bring you in at the beginning,” She turned to me, “Damn it, I told you!”

“You told me. And you were right. Can we hurry? The clock is ticking. Blake, this whole scheme is an open book. Ask us anything. Just, please, please, don’t kill yourself.”

“First of all, give me the combination to this bike lock.”

“two-four-eight-three.”

Blake released her. “Okay. Now, who the fuck are you?”

“Short answer: I’m a twelve-thousand-year-old psychic spirit that inhabits people. I was born a human being, but haven’t been truly human for a long, long time.”

“And how did you meet Cynthia?”

“Blake ... fuck, I can’t lie to you. It’s too risky. You’re too good at this. Promise me you will let me finish at least.”

“I’ll try not to judge.”

“The Amazons were a creation of my enemies, the so-called ‘Greek Gods’. I thought the woman warriors were all dead and gone more than three thousand years ago. Then Cynthia revealed herself to Air Marshal Prestridge in Crete when she got her powers. And that’s when I discovered the Amazons still existed. I came up with a plan to destroy, or at least expose, those bastard “gods” using Cynthia and the Amazons. It took me from 1941 until, what, last August to trap Cynthia. Honestly Blake, my intent was to turn her into a brainwashed pawn and force her to execute this sting as the bait.

“But something unexpected happened, Blake. I fucking fell in love with her. Truth to tell, I would have called off the Plan if she insisted, but as soon as I told her about it she insisted on following through with it!“

“So when she first told me about you?—”

“The day of the ten-second record takedown? The broken arm?”

“Right. Was she your brainwashed puppet at that point or your girlfriend?”

“Damn, Blake. She was in love with me, but I was still brainwashing her. For what it’s worth I was in denial. Not even twenty-four hours after that I had arranged a set-up that would have had her gang-banging a bunch of punks. My intent was to test the waters of her loyalty. Would it extend to whoring herself out? Given that that is exactly what I was going to need her to do ... Given that that is exactly what she did last night ... But never mind that. I aborted the gang bang at the last second. I couldn’t go through with it.”

While Blake was trying to digest that, Cindi did a quick date calculation. “What? So that’s what the thing in the park was all about? Is that why you were so morose the whole afternoon?”

“Please, Cindi, I feel bad enough—”

“No, you don’t get it!” She was right; I didn’t get it. She was wearing a grin like the kid who actually did get the pony for Christmas. “You didn’t do it! You loved me even then! I knew it! I knew it!” She could barely restrain herself. Her hug might have broken bones on a less solidly built man. Even so, it was more than a bit painful.

“Can I put the lock back on you before you kill me?”

“Sure. Blake, are you okay with that?”

“Um, yeah. Okay, I’m convinced. If your mind-control mojo is powerful enough to make her do that, then I don’t stand a chance anyway. You’re for real.”

“Blake, the asshole didn’t tell me he loved me until almost a week later. And he had to watch me get raped by my arch-nemesis before he could admit it.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, really! Talk about ‘emotionally distant’!“

“Wait. You were raped by Ares?”

I was mortified. “It was my stupid fault. I had to find a way to keep Ares from interfering with the sting, and my only other alternative would have been to kill him. I made a deal with him. I offered to let him have Majestic Woman for a few hours in return for his, ah, retirement.” I looked into Cindi’s eyes. She was putting on a pretty brave front, but inside she was reliving it. Not good. “I should have killed him.”

Blake shook his head. This was getting to be a bit too much. “Okay, I don’t think I want to know.”

Now Cindi stepped up. “Blake, we’re almost down to an hour and a half left. Can you please stop your little personal self-destruct sequence now? Or are you going to make us watch you die?”

“Sorry, Cynthia, I have to ask a few more questions. For instance ... What the hell are you trying to accomplish here?”

“Shit. This might take the whole ninety minutes. Let me start with when they first appeared ...”

To Be Continued in Chapter 17. In which our narrator makes the Gods very angry. Very angry indeed!