The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

“Awaken, slaves.”

Tory opened her eyes and saw the cabin’s ceiling. She did nothing else, not even hearing Twilight Queen’s engines over the silence in her headphones.

“On the command, remove the headphones, rise, and come to the Mass Indoctrination Area.

“Obey.”

Sliding the headset off, Tory rolled smoothly off the bunk, seeing her cabinmates do the same. Each of them wore a royal blue bikini, with the gold piping of a thoroughly-conditioned slave. Pleasure quivered deep in Tory: seeing the others move identically, knowing they were all utterly controlled, sensing that something different was happening, a new way to prove her obedience and please her Owners.

Remembering, as she did at each waking, that the Owners had made her into Their drone. Forgetting, as she already had, how free will had felt.

They stood in the same motion. Sandra, nearest the door, opened it, and then they turned one by one to step into the corridor. Their posture was perfect and controlled. As Tory’s mind pulsed with submission, she felt as though she and the other drones were parts of a single machine. As her eyes were captured by the rhythmic swing of Sandra’s ass, the thought got away from her.

It was midmorning and there were still a few women on deck, not yet assigned to their reorientation modes for this period. Tory had not been told to notice them, and barely did. These slaves were on the way back from their first stay on Isle Dormignonne, still coconut-scented from the taming lotion, still hypnotically convinced it was just sunscreen.

One of them moved toward Tory and the other drones, looking confused and envious. It was Annie, who’d befriended her earlier on this trip back, naively chatting about the wonderful time she’d been told she’d just had on the island. She belonged to the Owners now but no longer remembered that, recalling instead the unreal vacation the Owners implanted in her mind. She seemed to sense the deeper obedience that claimed Tory without really knowing it.

“Tory? Is something happening?” Annie tried to focus her gaze. “The ship’s turning, I think.”

She looked dazed, as though she’d just been to a refresher session. By this point on the cruise home, she and the others like her didn’t really need to attend the hypnosis shows. They were just herded into one of the video lounges, already trained to stare at the blinking screen and let the taped commands do the rest.

Annie’s questioning triggered something in Tory. She felt it override the compulsion to go to Indoctrination. Part of her drone function was to help control restless slaves.

She would pacify Annie.

“Everything is fine, Annie.” She spoke slowly, quietly, as she’d been taught. She smiled as she saw it soothe the other passenger. Annie wanted to be told what to do. She just needed help.

“Are you enjoying the cruise, Annie?”

The woman stiffened, lowering her hands and staring at Tory’s eyes as her own widened. A broad smile lit her face. “Ohhh, yessss.”

“Are you grateful, Annie?”

Annie blinked. “Yes. So. Grateful. To Queen Lines Resorts. They . . .” She swayed a little.

“Annie?”

The other woman shivered just a little. “. . . what? Oh. I’m—what am I doing here? I was with—”

“Relax, Annie.”

“Relax,” Annie repeated, falling into her eyes again.

“Nothing is wrong, Annie. The ship goes where they want it to, and we relax and enjoy and leave them in control.”

“They’re in control.” Annie nodded happily, finally understanding.

“Return to your friends, Annie. None of you want to think.”

“Mmm. No.” Annie smiled and twirled around to go help put her friends back into their mutual daze. Soon enough they would be summoned to exercise gently wearing headphones.

Tory stopped thinking about Annie and went on to Indoctrination.

Others were still arriving, as tranquil and blank as Tory was. She was starting to recognize some of them. The intensity of her final-phase brainwashing was fading, and now the memories were seeping back in, too late to affect her enslavement but putting some dimension on the lovely erotic blankness.

There were QLR staff in their mock-wetsuit tops and tight shorts waiting in Indoctrination, the large room that Annie and the other midprocess slaves still called the “banquet hall.” Tory and the other drones stood still as they assembled, not deferring to them. At a word from any of the staff women, Tory would be on her knees, and at a flash from a polished whistle her mind would stop, but she was beyond needing to defer to them. Slaves like Annie still venerated the crewwomen who controlled their days, but Tory saved her worship for the Owners.

Then there were Owners there, too. Tory was sinking to her knees before she sensed the soft sound of every other drone doing the same. Worship was an autonomic function now.

Tory saw them, odd and compelling in their loose clothing. They walked among Their kneeling property, careful not to trip over a spread thigh. Tory could remember kneeling to Owners, the mewing sound she made as she wanted so badly to crawl to Them and offer her mouth and all the things the Spiral had etched into her brain. Something like that licked at her now, slave heat in a slave’s cunt.

But the Spiral had roamed slowly through her mind and scoured out her will and wanting. It had sucked out her desires and pumped them back through her mouth and her pussy with chains on them.

Tory knelt now and felt the harness that had been all she wore in that part of her drone programming. There was a harness on her mind. She stayed quiet.

There was no need to yearn. She belonged to Them. They would tell her how to obey.

2.

They were speaking to each other.

“Will someone please just tell me what happened? Someone said Dormignonne actually—”

“It did. It was. There was a raid. Someone said there’s a French nuclear submarine there.”

“What are they doing at—?”

“One of the slaves did it. On Dormignonne. Someone broke programming.”

There was silence.

“Someone what? Excuse me?”

“I don’t know any more than that. The island people aren’t talking now, unless they’re talking with the mainland. But between what I did hear and what’s on the news, some bitch had enough willpower left in her to get to a radio, and decide that she didn’t want to be our obedient little playtoy anymore.”

“That’s not supposed to happen.”

There was a loud sigh, almost a snarl. “Well, it did. She called, they came.”

“She must have been some kind of infiltrator—”

“Security would never have—”

“She couldn’t have resisted. The drugs and the brainwashing would have reduced even a trained agent to—”

“Never mind! Why are we turning?” The disputes stopped.

“We’ve been told to make for San Diego.”

Another pause.

“Do we have anyone there? The Line’s ready to offload in San Fran—”

“I still say we should turn southeast. If we make Mazatlan they can send out—”

“She’s right! I talked to Oviedo on the satellite relay and the—”

“Shut up.”

Mistress Rusalka’s strummed something deep in Tory’s body.

She had long since found that soft wet weak place in Tory, and taken Tory along with it.

Tory remembered responding to that voice early, when she was just being drugged and hypnotized. Before They’d stripped her mind and allowed her at last to know They were enslaving her. They’d used that voice later, seeing how much control Mistress Rusalka had over her.

The other Owners responded too, now, in their way.

Mistress Rusalka let the silence lengthen and then entered it. “Oviedo ‘s dreaming. The Mexicans won’t let us anywhere near shore. We’re fast but it’s a small ocean these days and they’re all faster. GlobalSat says there’s an aircraft carrier—task group?—but I’m not sure. GlobalSat’s full of shit sometimes.

“It doesn’t matter.

“We can’t run. While you were talking with Oviedo I was listening to two navies tell us we’d better not do anything to the cargo, either. Maybe they think we’ll tell them to swim back to Dormignonne.

“They told us to change course for San Diego but they’re not even going to let us make port there. They’re going to stop us and board us as soon as they’re over the horizon. We have a few hours at most.”

Tory breathed, feeling the hypnotist’s resolve hum through her.

“They’re already flying over us.” Someone else spoke, but not challenging. “That plane early this morning.”

“That’s right. Seeing all the pretty mind-controlled ladies on deck.”

Tory felt warm, suddenly. She didn’t remember a plane, but she thought about being on display below it, one of Their possessions, coveted by others.

“Rusalka? Can we do that? Hold hostages? If they board—”

“If they get aboard, Evelyn, we’re fucked. We’re slavers, not commandos.”

“Do you have a plan, Rusalka?”

“Yes.” She let them absorb that. Tory had the oddest feeling that these other Owners were letting Rusalka command them, too. Maybe it was a little like hypnosis—and, like the first time she’d let Rusalka into her mind, it was voluntary.

“That’s why I preempted the daily deepening and woke the flock, here. We need to work quickly, but if we can keep the other ships away with hostages, we might buy enough time.”

“Time? For what?”

“Will the crew cooperate?” Someone new.

Rusalka laughed.

Evelyn told the other woman, “One thing we can count on: we—or our friends ashore—have a better idea where the crew’s families are than they do. And they know that Wives And Daughters database is not just a rumor.

“They’ll behave.”

“Time for what?” The question was firmer now, less panicked.

“Time to get ready to disembark,” Rusalka said. “If we start now, I think we’ll be set by the time they do take the ship. If we keep them uncertain, we can get close enough to San Diego that it makes more sense to let us dock, and we’ll be dealing with more amenable people.”

“Amenable—you mean mind-controlled? I didn’t think we had assets there.”

“’Assets’?” Rusalka’s sarcasm was brittle, but it didn’t break. “You’ ve been reading too many technothrillers. Assets. Jesus.

“I have no idea how many people we have there. Someone ashore is organizing for us, but we can’t control that.

“But no. I mean amenable, as in sincerely well-meaning and helpful.”

More silence.

“Rusalka? Dear? Have you been reading too much of something? Not even our customers want to be caught ‘helping’ us now.”

Rusalka laughed, and Tory saw Her rest Her hand on another drone’s head. The drone closed her eyes, and Tory was able to envy her. “Well, I should hope not, since we’re the baddies.

“No one would help us.”

She looked at the motionless slaves, kneeling erect, awaiting command.

“Not us.”

3.

Along the line of oiled women sunbathing, barely anyone moved, even the ones sharing loungers. Now and then a quiet beep in her headphones would prompt one of the solitary women to roll over, but only her body would awaken, and that only briefly.

Annie lay on the lounger, enjoying how it just fit her and Melody together. She sprawled half over Melody, her mind empty of anything but how smooth and warm the other woman was. She’d been sleeping with Melody for a couple of days, and as her awareness of a life other than bliss on Dormignonne slowly took shape in her mind, she was quietly pleased to remember how much Melody was going to be a part of it.

David would understand, eventually. If she and her . . . boyfriend were together for long when she got back.

Melody breathed in and Annie rode the slight movement. Then Melody sighed, forgetting what she might have thought of saying. A little later or a lot, she said, “That was a really good video.”

Annie blinked, agreeing completely. “I could have watched it over and over.” She slid a little against Melody and felt her pussy dampen. “What was your favorite part?”

Melody moved a little. “Hmm. It’s funny, but I can’t remember.”

“Neither can I,” Annie said, and raised her head just as Melody looked down at her.

“I just remember the lights going down, and the screen flashed, and then . . . the activity director was telling us to go out and play. Everyone seemed like they were just waking up.”

Annie smiled. “Kind of like at the magic shows. I just go right into a trance when Mistress Rusalka appears.”

They both stopped, suddenly drowsy. Even in the bright afternoon, their minds belonged for a moment to the shadows of the banquet hall, worshippers in Rusalka’s hypnotic cathedral.

Annie remembered first how to think again. “But there’s nothing unusual about that, of course.”

“Nothing unusual,” Melody repeated. “And we won’t need to remember it by the time we reach San Francisco.”

“No,” Annie said, suddenly pressing herself urgently against Melody’s bare hip. “We’ll forget.”

She had no idea how long they’d been staring at each other when their eyes were drawn to someone walking along the row of dreaming women. She was trim and authoritative in the royal blue and black top and shorts of a Queen Lines Resorts crewwoman, and Annie and Melody both felt a submissive quiver as they tensed, hoping to be commanded. It had been a wonderful surprise how well they’d been taught to enjoy obeying these women.

“She’s so . . . pretty.” Melody said what Annie was trying to think.

Annie was surprised to see the woman was Tory, her new friend and a veteran of QLR cruises. She thought Tory was another passenger, not staff, but seeing anyone in a QLR uniform always slowed her mind down and opened it. She stopped trying to wonder.

Tory stopped by their lounger, and they gaped up at her. “Melody?”

“Yes?” Annie heard her friend’s breathing change.

“Look at this and concentrate, please.” Without any ado, Tory took her whistle and held it in front of Melody, letting it twirl. Annie was barely aware of Melody’s eyes glazing over: the spinning toy was hypnotizing her, too.

She remembered that whenever she saw it she must relax and listen, and her mind was blanker than before. All she heard were Tory’s calm instructions to Melody. “Close your eyes, Melody.

“You will come with me now.” Annie went boneless as Melody slid from beneath her and someone’s hands set her gently onto the cushion, still warm from the other woman.

“Until you are told, Melody, you will see the whistle spin hypnotically in your mind. Each breath you take will send you deeper into trance. When I tell you to, you will open your eyes and follow me.

“What will happen then, Melody?”

“I will see the whistle spin in my mind,” Melody whispered. “I will obey.”

“Open your eyes, Melody.”

Annie heard her sigh, and then pad away after Tory.

It was a little disappointing, and even as the warm sunlight tranquilized her, it wasn’t quite like cuddling with Melody. But sleep, as always, was impossible to resist. She barely felt the fingers that slipped headphones onto her head, and the soft sounds wiped that from her mind.

The sun was lower as she woke, not really knowing what had roused her. She watched the others in the row, rising from their loungers. As she saw them putting away the headphones she realized she was doing the same, and wondered, not very hard, why that turned her on so much.

They rose, obeying an impulse beneath their awareness but stronger than any conscious thought they had. She lost track of where the impulse was taking her with the rest of them, and as she gave in to it she just felt sleepier. Maybe Melody had felt like this when Tory had used the whistle to make her obey.

By the time she realized she and the others were standing still in neat lines, facing a blank wall, she was already forgetting Melody again. She was nearly remembering something else, something about this room, that wall, the lovely helplessness of being so still.

Like she’d felt on Dormignonne, in one of those memories she knew she was being taught to forget for a while. A room of devotion and fear and the wonder of being subjugated, over and over. A room that darkened, as this one was, around spellbound women. The room where she had learned to worship.

Worship the Spiral.

It turned before her now, pulsing and glowing, owning Annie’s will as it had every time she was taken to it.

Like every woman around her, Annie was so deeply entranced she did not remember to kneel.

When the voice commands began, they ran through her like her blood, but warmer and more important.

4.

Annie and the others woke up on their feet in the banquet hall, still at attention in line. She wondered idly if there was going to be another magic show.

The tables had been moved to leave an open space. Some blue-bikinied passengers stood clustered here and there, seeming a lot more awake and aware than Annie felt. They looked like the activities directors and dance teachers who’d been gently controlling Annie’s life on Twilight Queen.

There were women in crew uniforms, but they just stood around, rigidly at attention. Annie recognized Tory among them, wide-eyed and unmoving.

It made Annie wet. Would she be joining them in that trance? How did it feel to be that deep? They looked so . . . so . . . enslaved. Annie could no longer question why that was so arousing. Or so familiar.

She wondered if the women in deep trance, dressed like crewmembers, were some new performance of Mistress Rusalka’s hypnotic powers, even more mindbending than other shows she could remember. Annie wanted to volunteer.

She’d beg on her knees to be part of this.

One of the passengers turned to the others with a grin and walked to the center of the room. She seemed oddly self-conscious in her brief swimsuit, but her body easily distracted Annie from worrying about that.

She lifted her arms, and Annie’s imagination supplied the dark gown: it was Mistress Rusalka, sexy and vulnerable as she played passenger. She clapped and several other women walked in, perfectly in step. They seemed more like Annie and the others normally were—wide-eyed, unresponsive—but they wore shorts and tank tops, more clothing than Annie remembered wearing for . . . ever.

But they were passengers. Annie recognized Melody, and just savored how still and docile she looked, staring at nothing, like the expressionless women on either side of her. Annie blinked: Melody’s hair was shorter, and darker, than it had been as they’d lain entwined in the sun.

How long ago?

“But we haven’t drugged them, Rusalka.”

Mistress Rusalka didn’t turn. “We don’t have time. And they’re enslaved enough as it is. I can do this.”

The hypnotist walked over to Melody and slid against her, kissing her and running her hands over Melody’s breasts and shoulders, palming her belly possessively. Melody stood still in her trance, too deep to respond. Annie lost track of which woman she wished she were.

Mistress Rusalka looked at the others she’d been waiting with, awkward and cute in their swimwear. “Choose your partners.”

Each of the others stepped to a passenger, some looking at them for a while before choosing one. Annie was wondering if they would be having sex, although only a couple actually played with the bodies of the women they chose, and none with the same easy possessiveness Mistress Rusalka did.

“It doesn’t have to be exact, people. You won’t be in the same place.”

Annie noticed how closely each chooser resembled her choice.

“Right,” Mistress Rusalka said, seeing the last woman find her not-quite-twin. “I’ll start. Light, please?” A spot brightened in front of her, and she stepped into it.

Annie felt something slide in her head. Before she even realized it, she was obeying conditioning she’d been receiving since her first night on board, falling into receptive trance just seeing Mistress Rusalka here, in this room, under lights. Seeing the hypnotist’s shapely body, with nothing but a few scraps of submissive dark blue over her breasts and cleft, bit even deeper into her.

“Obey my voice,” Mistress Rusalka said softly, but it echoed from the unseen walls, and between Annie’s own soft walls.

“I must obey.” Annie didn’t hear herself repeat it, though part of her managed to hear the rest of her fellow-passengers say it together.

“Yes. You must.

“Answer now, girls. Who am I?” She stood expectantly.

“You are Mistress Rusalka,” Annie heard herself answer, with the others. “You are the hypnotist we must obey.”

Mistress Rusalka smiled. “Good girls. And who is this?” She put her hands on Melody. Like the rest of the hypnotized women that had come here with her, Melody had not answered anything Mistress Rusalka had said to Annie and the others. Melody stood still for this, also.

“Melody. A guest of Queen Lines Resorts.” As the other voices faded, Annie realized one had been her own.

Mistress Rusalka smiled at them.

“No,” she said.

“Look at her.

“Think of the Spiral.” Annie’s mind darkened and spun and pulsed..

“Listen carefully.” The hypnotist placed her fingertips on Melody’s shoulder. “Who are you?”

Melody stared into space.

“I am Rusalka,” she said. “I am an irresistible hypnotist.”

Annie gasped, as the truth flared hot in her pussy.

“I have hypnotized all of you to control your minds.”

Annie felt her gaze pulled to the eyes that stared mindlessly past her, but she shivered to the unquestioned knowledge that those eyes had enslaved her.

“I control each of you, now. Obey my voice.”

What throbbed in Annie’s cleft now brought her maddeningly near orgasm. She knew she must do something to earn it, but her mind was comfortably empty of anything but the strange hot truth that this was Rusalka. But so was the other Rusalka. But this was . . .

“Since we know that you’re Rusalka,” asked Rusalka, “then—who am I?”

The wide-eyed Rusalka at attention said, “You are Annie’s roommate Melody. You are one of my hypnotized slaves.”

Annie and the others turned to look at . . .

The slow build of the climax drove Annie to her knees, but she couldn’t turn her gaze away from . . .

Melody.

Yes.

She must obeyyyy . . .

The women’s cries echoed as the orgasms burned in the truth.

New-but-always Melody stood next to rigid, staring Rusalka, looking at them, and laughed.

She waited for them to stop twitching. “Light, please?”

Another awake-looking woman in a bikini stepped into it, leading the more-dressed sleepwalker that looked like her.

From the dark, the voice Annie had learned to obey asked again, “Who is that?”

5.

Tory and Sandra waited by the locked door. They had remembered they must go there, but not why. They were obedient crewmembers and placidly waited to be told.

Mistress Rusalka came toward them down the corridor, in her loose shorts and tank top. Beside her pranced one of the slavegirls in her bikini. The slave’s name was Melody: the memory was clear and bright in Tory’s uncluttered mind, and its aura was orgasmic.

Ignoring the slave, she looked at Rusalka’s vacant stare and the way she stood listlessly when she stopped walking, but nothing in her questioned it. Her conditioning was snug over the awareness she was still allowed now.

Slave Melody reached to touch Rusalka, and Tory blinked. She . . . shouldn’t . . . she wasn’t commanded . . .

“Listen and obey.”

Tory’s concern died as the voice triggered her open. Staring emptily, she waited to be bidden.

“You will obey Melody’s voice now.”

“I will obey Melody.” Tory’s voice betrayed her pleasure, and Sandra’s did the same. Both drones were programmed to feel commands as deep caresses.

“You will not find this strange.”

“Not strange.”

“When we leave here Melody will reinstruct you and you will forget that you had to obey her.”

“Forget,” Tory murmured rapturously. “Obey.”

Rusalka closed her eyes and lowered her head. Tory was not programmed for that, and just watched the hypnotist go to sleep. Melody briskly walked past them and worked the combination lock.

“Listen and obey,” she said as the door opened, and Tory was lost in submissive bliss again.

“Other crewwomen dressed like you will be here soon. You will remember them from the hypnotic session you forgot.”

“I will remember them.”

“Yes. Each one has been told to fetch a weapon from this locker.” Melody’s crisp instructions faded a bit as she leaned inside to turn the light on and glance at the racked guns. “You will keep watch until everyone has armed herself as she was instructed.”

“Keep watch.”

“Yes. When the other crewwomen have their weapons, you will remember to take yours, then secure the door.”

“Remember to take mine. Secure.”

Melody swallowed, and seemed to be breathing hard. “Right. You will . . . no. Rest now.”

She turned to Rusalka, lifting the sleeping hypnotist’s chin with her finger. “Awaken. Obey.”

Rusalka’s eyes opened and stayed glazed. “I obey.”

“I can handle these crewwomen, Mistress Rusalka. You have complete confidence in how well you’ve brainwashed me into your slave, and in how receptive you’ve made me to all those irresistible commands you implanted in my thoughts. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes, Melody,” Rusalka said, staring fixedly at the slave. “I totally control your mind and will.”

“Well of course you do.” Melody chuckled and Tory didn’t think. “You’ re Rusalka, after all.”

“Yes, I . . . am . . . Rusallllllka . . .” the other woman moaned as her eyes rolled up for a moment.

“You’re welcome,” Melody said softly. \ “All right. You will go now to C deck, to stateroom PC23, and activate my fellow slave Bettyann. You will trigger her by saying ‘I must obey,’ and then you will listen carefully to her questions to answer them.”

“I understand,” Rusalka said, and walked dreamily back up the corridor.

Tory still rested, waiting for more orders from the slave she’d been told to obey.

Then Melody was in front of her, running her hand under the snug lycra of the wetsuit-like top, watching Tory’s response. Tory shook silently but the arousal didn’t break her focus. She was still ready to obey.

The slave’s soft hands moved up her breasts, and slid the zipper up to her neck, slipping down so Melody could see the effect.

“Mmm. No. Cleavage is definitely better on this one,” the slave told herself, and unzipped it again, smiling up into the spellbound crewwoman’s eyes. Tory stared back, realizing how very, very enthralling the slave’s eyes were. Even when she felt Melody’s fingertip between her breasts, she didn’t think of looking away.

Then she was standing still, facing the wall, fascinated by its blankness.

“Now you see it.” The Spiral appeared.

The voice passed unopposed into Tory’s mind. “What are you, Tory?”

“I am a crewmember”—pleasure tweaked her—“of Twilight Queen. I work for Queen Lines Resorts and obey their orders.”

“What do the passengers think your job on Twilight Queen is, Tory?” The voice was calm, all-knowing, unstoppable.

“They believe I am an activities director.”

“Why do they believe that, Tory?”

“It is part of their brainwashing.” It excited Tory to know that.

“What is your real job on Twilight Queen, Tory?”

Tory straightened, still lost in the Spiral she was told to see. “I help control the passengers. I use spot-hypnosis with the whistle focus, which they have been trained to submit to. I look for signs of resistance and neutralize it. I look for thought, and bend it to group submission.”

“How does it feel to sashay around in a skimpy blue swimsuit, Tory?”

“I only wear my staff uniform. Swimsuits are for guests.”

“What are the guests to you, Tory?”

It felt familiar, like so much else that still seemed strange. “They are slaves. They are Queen Lines property. They are to be trained and controlled to produce value. Obedient girls are the most valuable ones.”

“Were you ever a slave, Tory?”

Tory could almost see the Buildings on Dormignonne. She could taste the Mistresses she pleasured on her knees. She could feel the coolness as she went barefoot to the underlevels where she would be put ever deeper in the thrall of the Spiral. The Spiral turned now, mindtwisting her into another truth.

“No,” she remembered. “I have never been a slave.”

6.

Annie wandered to the video lounge. She was calm and happy, but there was something odd fluttering just underneath her happiness. Some of the other girls seemed that way, too, but they could only chirp to each other about how wonderful they felt.

Things were so strange. Annie met Jean, her neighbor from a nearby cabin, and tried to make herself concentrate enough to ask Jean what she thought as they settled to a couch together. It was harder than ever to resist the temptation to drift.

Seeing Jean struggle vaguely to respond kept her focused, but even then she wanted just to stop trying and lie back and let her mind go slack. Or, better, to let a clear-eyed woman in two-tone lycra speak to her softly and firmly and tell her some nice, simple things to think.

Annie started to feel that it might be more fun to have sex with Jean than waste time trying to think for herself.

Jean looked over her shoulder. “Oh. Oh.” Without any other change, she was visibly aroused. “It’s . . . um . . . Caitlin.” It distracted Annie from the erotic fold where Jean’s thigh curved beneath her bikini panty. Caitlin was Jean’s cabinmate in a double.

Caitlin was next to them as they sat, smiling down and putting a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Hi.” Her vitality was arousing and a little scary. She seemed so much stronger and less drowsy. “You’re Annie, aren’t you?”

Annie looked up and forgot to speak. Suddenly she wanted to have sex with Caitlin instead. Caitlin would devour her and make her scream but she wanted it.

Yes. I remember. This is Caitlin. The thought was rewarded by more warmth in her pussy. It felt nice to remember that this was Caitlin.

Annie blinked. Part of her mind was obliviously telling her No Caitlin’s a redhead too but she tans so well but she kept looking up at the other passenger, pale and auburn-haired, and remembered a hypnotic voice and Caitlin spotlit, smiling, real.

“You’re Caitlin.” The reward-shiver made her moan. Caitlin smiled, looking nervous.

“Of course I am. Who am I?”

“You’re C-c-caitlin!” Annie and Jean blurted it out together. They fell against each other with the pleasure, but not for a moment could they look away from her.

“Yes,” she said. “Am I just like you?”

“Oh, yes!” Jean spoke first, still loose in Annie’s arms. “You’re a helpless prisoner here, just like us. We were all brainwashed together and trained to be slaves, and unless someone rescues us from this ship we’ll all be sold off and remember nothing of our past lives.”

Caitlin looked at her, and at the way both of them were writhing as she recited it. “A little melodramatic, but we can work on it.” She forced a smile. “But for now I think we have to obey a posthypnotic suggestion to go back to our room and have a lot of sex.”

“Annie too?” breathed Jean, absently moving her hand to Annie’s thigh.

“Most certainly,” Caitlin said. “I feel a compulsion to taste her. I can’t resist.”

“I can’t resist,” Jean repeated, moving slowly against Annie. Caitlin watched them move delicately to stand.

Then they heard steps, crewwoman’s squeaking crosstrainers and the bare feet of a hypnotized fellow passenger. Tory stood there, nearly robotic, looking dangerous even apart from the submachinegun slung from her shoulder. Next to her was . . .

Melody. Annie squirmed against Jean as another reward bloomed between her thighs. Yes. Oh yes! I remember. This is my roommate Melody!

Melody was holding one of Tory’s hands, but the crewwoman (yes oh yes) seemed oblivious. Melody seemed to be massaging the crewwoman.

The crew have kept us hypnotized, Annie remembered, not wondering how she knew. She must have hypnotized Melody into massaging her hand. Melody’s as helpless as we are.

“Hello, Rusalka,” Caitlin said to Melody.

“Hello, Caitlin.”

“Oh, shit. Sorry. Melody. Hello, Melody.”

“Never mind. They’re too programmed now to notice. Just a bad habit for you.”

“Are you sure they are? Melody?”

Melody groaned quietly. “You don’t need to do stress it. The sex-feedback’s imprinted it onto their minds—just look at their expressions.

“Are we all set?”

Caitlin nodded quickly, appeasingly. “All set. We reached the mainland people and they know the plan. They’re got people arriving in San Diego as we speak.”

“What about the records onboard?”

“Chris—I mean—oh, what the hell is her ‘real’ name now, Melody?”

A sigh. “Whoever she is, did she switch it all out? Our data, for the new crew’s?” Melody’s hand cupped Tory’s breast, reaching past the gun strap.

“My god, Rusal—Melody. How can you be so fucking calm about this? We’re going to be literally fucking naked when we meet them.”

Now Melody’s hand stroked Annie’s hair. “There’s a lot to be said for naked, Caitlin. And now that we’re done—I guess that was a yes on the data switch? fine—we have a few hours to kill on a ship full of naked, beautiful, obedient women.

“In any case, consider the alternative. This is easier, and a lot more fun.”

When Caitlin didn’t say any more, Melody turned to Tory. “You have your instructions, and you will obey.”

“I will obey,” Tory intoned.

“Run along, then.” Melody patted the crewwoman on her ass and Tory dutifully marched off.

“I’m going to miss that,” Caitlin said, softly.

Melody smiled back at her. “That’s the spirit.” She looked again at Tory’s sleek figure, off to obey her latest instructions. “But I don’ t plan to do without it.”

Annie looked at her roommate (ohhh yes) and wondered how Tory had brainwashed her just now. It was so sinister, the way Tory had made it seem as though she were the mindslave, under Melody’s control.

“Damn, girl.” Caitlin seemed close to tears. “You’re starting to make me think this will work.”

Melody grinned. “If you need someone to make you think things, I hear there’s a hypnotist or two aboard.

“Care to trance?”

7.

Caitlin grinned back but averted her eyes. “I’m OK.” She looked at Jean, and Jean was transfixed, taking her outstretched hand without seeming to remember Annie. Annie just watched them go back to their cabin.

“Annie? Come with me.”

Annie rose and followed her roommate. This really was her roommate and she didn’t need to think more about that. Instead she started thinking about going to bed with her now, and about all the things she could do to give Melody pleasure.

Yes. She remembered it clearly. They were just two hypnotized slaves on this ship, with brainwashers like Tory and the mysterious Rusalka controlling them like puppets.

It was easier to think about sex. Annie looked forward to learning how Melody would taste, then paused.

But . . . they’d been sleeping together all the way from Isle Dormignonne. Maybe before that—island time was blurred behind a warm, pussy-scented veil in her mind. So why would Melody taste new?

Annie smiled as the door closed and the bikinis whispered off them. It wouldn’t matter, really, until someone told her whether it should.

She thought nothing of crawling the rest of the way to part Melody’s thighs and bend to serve her.

Melody tasted wonderful, as though for the first time.

She moved against Annie’s face with an urgency that Annie didn’t remember from before, but the hands on her shoulders and the way Melody’ s thighs tightened and loosened felt too good to wonder about.

Melody drew her up onto the bunk after a while, and Annie lay back in her arms, opening herself as Melody began to play her. As she masturbated Annie with light strokes that made Annie’s world waver, Melody smiled into her face and whispered to her. Annie just sagged in her roommate’s hold, hearing without listening.

By the time Melody let her come, Annie had forgotten there was anything but the bliss that owned her. The orgasm shattered her and Melody lowered her gently to the sheet before sliding against her.

Annie woke into evening dimness and noticed there was no arm over her. Warmth against her back reassured her. When she turned over, Melody was awake and staring. She lay very still but Annie could feel her heart race. She touched Melody’s breast and the nipple seemed to harden, but Melody didn’t blink.

“Melody? What is it?”

Melody kept staring, and Annie was glad she couldn’t see whatever it was she saw. Then she started shaking. Annie held her tightly and put her lips to Melody’s ear.

“How long have you been lying here like that?” It made her feel guilty, after Melody had given her that pleasure and the sleep it dropped her into.

“I’m sorry, Annie.” Hesitantly, Melody hugged her back.

“I’m afraid.”

Annie kissed her. “Is it about the crew? Us being brainwashed?”

Melody seemed to think about it. “Yes, Annie. That’s it.”

“I know, Melody. It’s horrible. I can’t wait to be rescued.

“But we’ll be all right, all of us. I promise.” Annie didn’t know how she could promise, but Melody worried her. She was so quiet.

“I hope so,” Melody sighed, and held her tighter. “Nothing like . . . this . . . ever happened to me before.”

“I know,” Annie whispered, wanting to lick Melody but making herself concentrate on keeping her talking. “It’s so unreal. Those women . . . I still feel like I can trust them and do what they tell me.”

She started to reach for her pussy and stopped herself. “But Mistress Rusalka’s—my secrets are safe with her, and I can sleep and tell them, and she’ll tell me more—”

“Annie.” Melody looked up at her. “Annie, stop it. Don’t let it hypnotize you.”

Annie shivered and melted into the other woman’s arms. “God. I know they enslaved us all, but I still feel like I want to go to sleep with my bra off in front of a hundred strangers, if she’s the one hypnotizing me.

“What kind of people could do that to us? What’s Mis—what’s Rusalka thinking about right now?”

Melody breathed across her hair. “Someone like her is probably fast asleep. Dreaming about hypnotized women. Not a c-care in the w-w . . .” She was shaking.

“Shhh.” Annie turned and found her lips. “Let’s just lie here until we fall asleep, too.”

Melody pressed closer, and Annie moved softly against her.

They might have slept. Annie felt groggy as the cabin door opened and a crewwoman stood backlit from the corridor.

Annie tensed and put her arm across Melody as they both looked at the intruder. Inside Annie something tried to whisper No! Leave us alone! but it felt so wrong that it faded.

“Listen and obey.” The voice was robotic, and both of them twitched on the bed as the command reached into them.

“I must obey,” they moaned in soft harmony.

“Come on deck at once. Obey.”

They slid off the bed and followed her out. Annie felt the fallen bikini under her foot as she crossed the cabin, but it felt good to let the compulsion keep her walking and blunt any impulse to stop and dress. Other passengers were walking dazedly down the corridor, some as nude as she and Melody.

God. They’re brainwashed. So am I.

All her bad thoughts about Queen Lines were fading with each dreamy step as she saw the obedient women around her, caught in the same spell, juicing to the same lovely submission.

The pretty bodies excited Annie, and the liquid lockstep mesmerized her into joining it. She was obeying and she loved it. Beside her, Melody seemed to calm down. Annie had a little willpower left, and she used it to take Melody’s hand.

Melody squeezed back.

They clutched each other as they emerged into nighttime and a flaring stage, like a TV magic spectacular. Searchlights raked Twilight Queen from above, and sudden thunder resolved itself into helicopters and angry gibberish from bullhorns.

Impassive crewwomen kept pointing to the deck, where several women were already kneeling. Annie caught some of Melody’s fear, but now it was Melody who grasped her hand and smiled when she turned. Over Melody’s shoulder, she could see what looked like the half-lit shape of another ship.

They went with the rest of the slaves and dropped to their knees. In the middle of everything, Annie got turned on again, looking across the deck at the other women. They all looked deeply entranced, oblivious to the lights that slashed across them, reflecting from their empty eyes.

It was like one of the shows she’d gone to where Mistress Rusalka had most of the room under her spell, seeing and thinking only what she told them. Rusalka had been making them into her slaves . . .

Annie saw Caitlin, then, noticeably cowering among the hypnotized, but trying to mimic their stillness.

The QLR women stood over them, and she saw the black shapes of the machineguns they held.

Very shortly, the helicopters went away.

As quiet returned, Twilight Queen sailed on. Annie looked out again as she and the others were herded below again. The other ship still shadowed them, but did nothing else.

Back in bed, Melody took charge, smiling, as though her fear had never been. Annie gave herself up to Melody’s mouth and fingers, and forgot the fear too.

8.

Fear kept washing against Tory, even though the morning was bright, but it kept steaming off her before she could feel it. She looked around at the other crewwomen under the overhang and barely saw them.

She was so bone-meltingly aroused that only the hypnotic control let her stay on her feet and let her function. The lust would have controlled her, and she’d be fucking something until she passed out—maybe the gun she still gripped tightly.

What’s happening? The plaintive little voice in her head kept peeping through. It spoke into the rare lulls between obedience compulsions and moist sexual reminders of why it was so hot to submit.

The helicopters were back this morning like wasps, circling the ship. They kept their distance, but it wasn’t a lot.

Tory remembered standing on deck last night, half-blind from the searchlights, with what looked like half the passengers kneeling in trance at her feet and the others’. She knew her gun was loaded.

If I had gotten the command, she thought, tightening at the thrill. God help me I would have done it.

It aroused her more to know they would just have knelt there and let her kill them. She knew how deeply controlled they were—not as thoroughly owned as she was, but enough that they couldn’t have fought the orgasmic need to kneel and die. If they even thought of fighting.

She looked out at the port without really seeing it. It was San Diego, they’d said, but that wasn’t what she was supposed to think about.

Tory and the other crew were supposed to protect Queen Lines’ merchandise from the helicopters and the grey ships and the smaller diagonally-striped boats and the smallest ones, darting here and there in front of Twilight Queen with their spume over the POLICE on their sides.

Twilight Queen pulled toward the wharf that seemed to be its goal, and their angry flotilla made way for it. Tory had no idea who was running the ship, or who was talking to the people in the other ships.

She’d spent forever this morning worshipping the Spiral, and it kept sucking the thoughts and fears out of her as the lust washed in to replace them. Tory was an obedient crewwoman. She had no need to think.

Mistress Rusalka walked into the space beneath the overhang. Tory and the others stood at attention. For a moment, Tory seemed to remember Rusalka asleep on her feet, utterly in the power of one of her own slavegirls, but a Spiral-driven moment later Tory remembered only Rusalka’s hypnotic dominance.

“You are all falling deeper now,” the hypnotist said, and her voice slid over Tory’s mind like a hand over a horse’s flank. It felt fainter than she was used to. She yearned for the way commands would slam into her drone-mind and turn it into the next thing its owners wanted. This felt too soft.

But she fell deeper, as she’d been told to.

“You will all obey,” Rusalka told them. Her monotone slid inside Tory’ s thoughts. Tory forgot to yearn for her lost dronehood.

“You must kill anyone who approaches this part of the ship.” There was a lack of conviction in the way their hypnotist gave that order, but Tory and the others accepted it anyway. She slid the strap along her shoulder until she held the gun at her hip and pivoted, seeing the others move the same way.

In the distance, further along the deck, she saw two figures, one dark and one pale in matching blue bikinis, come up a stairway and look at them. She wondered who was minding those slavegirls for Queen Lines, but she felt a luxurious lack of need to do anything about it. It was like the blissful void that swallowed her few attempts to remember when, or if, she’d ever been taught to shoot. She was a crewwoman and she would obey. It was so nice not to think.

A helicopter settled and blatted at the two slaves, and a loudspeaker boomed encouragingly. The women scrambled below.

Twilight Queen drifted closer to the wharf and slowed down. The helicopters settled closer. Tory was so terrified she nearly orgasmed where she stood as the sex feedback spiked and kept spiking.

Her mind whited out over and over and she wanted to obey, to run out and fist her own cunt and fire the gun at anyone and everything. She wanted to scream at someone to command her and squash her puny little will.

She stood still.

Her eyes locked with the wildly dilated ones of another woman in lycra who trembled nearby, trapped in the same sexual trance.

I know. Me too. I neeeed . . . oh, I’d fuck you if I could.

They couldn’t speak, but there was a link after that, and the other drone looked a little saner. We will obey. Tory didn’t care who had thought that. It was in both their minds.

It was both their minds, now.

There was noise behind her. The enemies standing off Twilight Queen had stopped standing. With all the noise and distraction as the helicopters had been edging back and there was no new display of hostages, they were storming the ship.

Tory and the others turned to Rusalka, begging silently for command.

Rusalka stood serenely, and it soothed them. She pointed to the corridors that led into the staterooms. It triggered the programming that had poured into them last night instead of sleep, after they’d come down from the deck behind their sleepwalking hostages.

As she ran with the others to lose herself in the ship and kill anyone who tried to hunt them out, Tory felt lighter. Rusalka joined her as they went in, as though taking Tory as her bodyguard, and Tory hoped she got a chance to submit to trance one more time.

The staterooms were nearly empty. Only a few slave-passengers blinked listlessly at them as they passed. Tory didn’t wonder why.

A male voice cracked loudly in from outside, another loudspeaker: “ They’re not all aft. Assume they have some hostages up here.

“But if you have a clean shot, take it.”

Tory was moaning and leaning against the wall in afterglow before she realized how scared she was, again. A few more climaxes like that and they wouldn’t need to shoot her.

Rusalka stood next to her, blinking. “We must defend the ship,” she said, looking concerned at how horny and scared her bodyguard was.

“I obey,” Tory answered and tried to stand.

Somewhere down the corridors a furious burst of gunfire started up. It was sustained, rising and falling but constant. Tory flinched and then looked at her gun. She knew and didn’t know how to use it. She saw the selector, and the mark that a voice in her head called Full Automatic.

The fusillade was her crewmates. They had no idea what they were doing. They were just spraying bullets, as she would have.

“There! Got two!”

Figures darkened the end of the corridor. Tory saw Rusalka’s eyes, wide with terror and complete confusion with no hypnotic orgasm to soothe it.

“Clear!”

It wasn’t like being hypnotized, and for a moment Tory forgot about Kill them. There was something else, someone else, in Rusalka’s eyes now. The scream was in her own head.

Red dots glowed on Rusalka’s cheek and slid down to her chest. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened and her head started to shake No.

Tory didn’t even try to drop the gun. She just fell toward the other woman, saw the red dots vanish and knocked her to the deck, staying on front of her.

The bullets were already turning her insides to flame before she even heard the shots or felt them tear her back. As they slammed onto the deck Rusalka gasped beneath her, winded or shot too. Tory tried to see her face, but it was too hard to move her head, or even to raise her eyes.

She hoped it really was Rusalka moving, alive, safe, even if Rusalka was crying hysterically.

Then it was too hard for Tory to tell her dimming awareness from the peaceful dark closing around it.

9.

In the warehouse they’d turned into the incident center, Annie sat gazing up at the cavernous ceiling. They’d filled the floor with cots and partitions, trying to keep the women contained but comfortable. The place swallowed sound, and it was easy to find a quiet bubble like this one, even with dazed ex-hostage passengers blinking at everything and police and everyone else bustling around.

Melody had been restless until they wandered to this area, near a set of side doors, as though she felt nervous too close to the police tables.

Across the trestle table, the woman from an agency Annie’d already forgotten swore quietly at her laptop. “Sorry,” she said, and Annie fell in love with her frazzled smile and her hand-lettered nametag. Beverly. “We’re trying to match the records they got from the ship, and they filter everything before they let us access it.

“Your friends in Queen Lines have been nasty that way.”

Annie blinked. She knew Queen Lines had brainwashed her, and they were evil, but she still felt pretty passive about it all.

“Would you like something else to drink while we wait?”

Annie smiled automatically and shook her head. “No, this is fine, thanks.” It was syrupy juice, but Annie sensed any other answer might require her to think and choose, and that still seemed hard to do. And a little naughty. She pulled the blanket around her.

Melody lay against her on the cot. They’d clung together when the raiders had swarmed aboard and the shooting started, and they’d siamese-twinned ever since. Annie wasn’t sure whose idea it had been for so many of them to have been there in that part of the ship, but it had helped the rescuers get them off quickly.

They’d been kept aboard as the team took over the ship and brought it to dock, and then herded rapidly to the wharf and behind sandbags, into a building. There was still shooting up above, but someone said they were afraid of other things aboard and wanted the women off badly enough to risk strays from the firefight.

Inside, when they’d stopped running for a moment, Melody had slipped into Annie’s arms, her eyes shining. “You promised we’d make it!” They ‘d kissed, and held on to each other longer.

Everyone else she knew had made it too—almost. Caitlin sat alone, waiting to hear if anyone had seen Jean. She stared at everyone fearfully, as if each person might be coming to tell her the worst.

“Still reloading the directory,” Beverly said.

“What kind of records did they have on us?” Melody’s whisper was soft but carrying.

“We’re not sure yet,” Beverly told her, looking pleased to see someone a little more aware than the drowsy norm. “Basic biographical stuff is all we’re looking for now. Making sure we can account for everyone on the manifest.

“If they had more on the, uh, things they did to you, they’ll have specialists to look for it. At it.” Beverly blushed and tried to smile again, tripping over what she knew had happened to Annie and Melody and everyone else.

“Is someone missing?” Melody asked, pulling closer to Annie.

“Well, they want to make sure.” Beverly’s smile was getting strained.

Annie put her arm around Melody and looked down. “It’s in case they did shoot someone, Melody. Or toss her overboard.

“Right, Beverly?”

Beverly went white, but nodded.

“It’s OK,” Annie said. “We know they were dangerous. They had us on deck last night when the choppers were using the searchlights. I don’t know if they were going to shoot us, but . . .”

“I thought I dreamed that,” Melody said, but then she looked up gravely at Beverly. “Sorry. It’s just weird talking to someone and not having her hypnotize me or give me commands.

“You know?”

Beverly nodded. “Well, you’re right. We worried they may have tried to eliminate you as witnesses. But—it’s also for women who are alive but may have been elsewhere on the ship we haven’t gotten to yet. Or just in trance. We can go back and look.”

“What about . . . them?” Melody made herself sit up straighter. “The slavers?”

Beverly avoided her eyes. “We’re prioritizing your files. Their ‘roster’ is on another database.”

She frowned. “Frankly, we don’t care as much about those monsters. Someone said there were some questions about their IDs but what difference does it make? Half of them are dead anyway and good riddance!”

Melody seemed to relax.

“At least that hypnotist dominatrix is alive.”

“Rusalka?” Caitlin had come over and heard that. A couple of other women were with her, and they all looked alarmed. Annie felt calm but she felt Melody tense again.

“Yes,” Beverly said, looking at the cadre of victims and trying to give them good news. “One of her guards got killed keeping her from getting shot—probably had some kind of spell on her.

“Anyway, she didn’t get off easy. They’re questioning her now, and they won’t be gentle about it.”

Beverly looked up at them, nearly angry enough to cry. “She could trick you with her drugs and hypnotism, but this time she can’t just swing a watch and . . .”

“That’s great,” Caitlin said, glancing at Melody. “She’ll probably tell them all sorts of things about the mind controllers aboard.

“Really soon.”

Melody looked up at her, absently stroking Annie. “She probably will. They’ll need to know some of the other things, too, like what she did to us. For therapy.” She looked at Beverly, who nodded with relief.

“Beverly?”

“Yes?” She looked away as a few more women joined them, nodding to Caitlin and Melody, then pointedly gave her attention back to Melody.

“I’m sorry. I was just looking at you and I . . . felt really bad all of a sudden. I mean this must be a lot for you to take in, but you’re being really cool about it.”

“Oh, that’s OK!” Beverly blushed again and smiled. Annie smiled back helplessly. “I’m really glad to help.”

Melody nodded. “I know. But . . . it’s odd, I guess, but I think we may have less stress than you do. QLR did us a favor by hypnotizing us—it’s insulating us. We feel very calm, wonderfully relaxed. But everyone here—you’re unprotected, meeting all that stress.”

Annie leaned against her, soothed by her even tone, beaming at Beverly. She felt Melody moving slightly, back and forth, and found it was putting her to sleep. She fought it, and kept blinking her eyes open.

Beverly blinked too, staring back at Annie, listening to Melody’s soft voice as it put her to sleep.

10.

“. . . up all night preparing for the ship to come in, so worried and uncertain what you’d find, worrying if we’d even be alive, what you’d have to heal . . . yes . . . no rest, no peace . . . but now, Beverly, you can relax. Just as I am relaxed.

“I had a nice, long, deep, restful sleep last night, so I’m not as sleepy as you are. One thing they trained us to do is go right to sleep on command, right to sleep. Just a command and we can go to sleep and close our eyes and pay attention to what a voice is telling us . . .”

Beverly was forcing her eyelids up and breathing deeply and slowly, not looking away from Melody.

Annie stirred a little, seeing Melody hypnotize the other woman. But she felt too relaxed to want to do anything about it.

“. . . sleep now, deep restful sleep, hearing my voice, only my voice . . .”

Beverly closed her eyes and sighed, and didn’t open them again. Her shoulders sagged a little but she sat fairly straight. Annie started to feel aroused, remembering so many of Rusalka’s hypnotic shows and how erotic the entranced women looked, up on the monitors, as she conquered them.

“Listen to my voice, Beverly. You trust my voice, especially now while you enjoy your sleep and I will think for you. Isn’t that right?”

Beverly nodded slightly. “Think for me.”

“Good. You think you will obey my voice, because everything I tell you is right and wonderful and helps you sleep.”

“. . . will obey you . . .” Beverly smiled dreamily.

“Yes. Obey me.” Melody turned to Annie and touched her forehead.

Suddenly a whisper in Annie’s head rose to a firm voice, and Annie felt the trance begin. She remembered receiving her newest orders as she spasmed in Melody’s arms, submitting more deeply with each near-climax as the hypnotic gaze pulled her further away from her will.

Now she was standing by the cot and Melody was beside her, looking at Caitlin and the other women, who were all smiling wolfishly.

“Everyone here?”

Caitlin nodded. “Yes, but my little candy-striper’s down near the middle of the hall. Not as much of a looker as this one. She’ll come looking for me soon.”

Melody grinned. “Not a problem.” She turned to Beverly, who sat sleeping peacefully as they moved to surround her.

“Beverly, each time I command you, you will obey.”

“I will obey.” Beverly sounded relieved.

“Yes. Each time you obey, you will sleep more deeply.”

“Sleep more deeply.”

“Yes. Stand up now and open your eyes, but remain fast asleep and obedient.”

Beverly stood up, staring forward.

“Undress, Beverly.”

The woman blinked, but did not resist, and soon her sweater and jeans were on the table and she was peeling off a pretty white cotton panty and a bra.

“Who’s the best fit?” Melody didn’t look away from Beverly as she spoke. Annie wondered who was taking Beverly’s clothes, but only distantly.

She knew she just needed to listen to Melody’s voice and be ready when Melody willed her to obey, or to sleep.

Now Beverly stood nude and hypnotized as they looked at her. Between them and the partition nearby, no one else in the incident center could really see what was going on. There were certainly enough wide-eyed women wearing little or nothing for one more to go unremarked.

“Beverly?” Melody nodded at Caitlin, who held up a wallet and keys, gripping them to avoid a clatter that might wake the sleeper. “Where is your car parked?”

Beverly obediently recited how to get to her car, and described it for them.

Annie listened to Beverly’s voice thicken as she obeyed each command and sent herself deeper.

“Thank you for all your help, Beverly. What I’d like you to do now is cancel and delete the computer query you were starting for our records, and then you will feel so very, very sleepy that you’ll want to take a nap.

“Obey.”

Beverly turned briskly and bent to the laptop, tapping away as the screen reflected fetchingly in her eyes. Then she returned to attention, and started a losing fight to keep her eyes open again.

“All right, Beverly.” Melody’s voice was a seductive whisper. “You’ve been a very obedient girl and you will remember that you enjoy being hypnotized, especially to submit your will to someone else’s command.” Melody waved to Caitlin without looking away from Beverly.

“But as you remember that, you will forget that you met me, or Annie, or the other women here. All of us will blur and fade in your mind, more and more with each step you take to that soft, warm, comfortable bed there.

“When I tell you to, you will walk to it, forgetting as you go. When you sit down on it, your mind will be empty of us forever, and you will be able to think only of deep, deep sleep, and of how much you look forward to being hypnotized. When you lie down you will sleep.”

Beverly was nodding fervently. Desperate effort kept her eyes open, though her lids drooped.

She stood, panting slowly, unable to move until the hypnotist told her to. Melody looked her up and down, and smiled. “I’ve caught my limit. I’ll throw her back.

“Obey now, Beverly. Sleep and forget.”

“. . . obey . . . sleep . . . forget . . .” Beverly drifted to the cot and settled onto it slowly as though sinking through water, and then smiled blissfully as she tilted over to sleep. She went endearingly limp before she was even all the way down, and Annie almost cried at how awkwardly she lay. Melody shifted her own blanket and went over to arrange Beverly and tuck her in. Beverly smiled in her sleep and squirmed a little.

She looked like another survivor, and Annie realized no one would disturb her sleep for a while.

One of Caitlin’s companions was pulling the sweater on and caught the keys when Caitlin threw them. She went purposefully away toward one of the entrances.

Annie saw there were a few other women, official-looking until they set their briefcases down and began slipping out clothing, passing it quickly to Caitlin and her friends, who slipped behind the partitions and changed. No one around seemed to notice the activity.

“Same security,” one of them said to Melody. “Harder to get in, unless you have papers. They’re more concerned with intrusion than escape here in the victims’ area.

“We can leave as soon as you’re dressed.”

Another woman with them had a shorter skirt, the legs for it, and the same glazed look Annie had come to know and dampen to.

“Compliments of the travel agency,” she recited in a high voice, and they laughed softly as she held out a thick envelope. “My Owner sent these documents, and there are three vehicles for you based on your advance count.” The women who’d brought her watched her but said nothing, apparently pleased with her obedience so far.

She blinked. “I wasn’t programmed for additional vehicles, Mistress. Did you—?”

“It’s all right,” Melody said. “I had Evelyn borrow that car because I need some room for a souvenir.” Annie felt Melody’s hand on her ass and moaned.

Melody looked at the new woman who’d talked about security. “I’ll clean her and feed her, Mom. Promise! Promise!” They smiled and shook their heads.

“I’ll bet you will,” said one. “All the juice she can lick.”

“You’re certainly entitled.” Caitlin seemed almost giddy with relief. “Damn, we’re here, we fucking made it.. I never thought we could pull this off.”

“I wasn’t sure we could, myself,” Melody said, and grinned at their looks. “Maybe I’m kidding.

“But I made sure I picked a stand-in with a cute roommate.”

Annie turned to see her smiling. She started to say something, but she never knew what it would have been.

Because Melody touched her forehead again first, and her mind turned off.

“What is your reason to live, slave?”

Annie stood still and gazed into Her eyes, seeing the Spiral in their depths, remembering how it had pulled her soul away already and made it Her toy.

“To worship and obey You in every way, Mistress Rusalka.” Annie orgasmed where she stood and didn’t move at all.

Mistress Rusalka kissed her deeply and took someone’s trenchcoat, draping it over Annie’s shoulders and closing it across her nakedness. Their eyes met and Annie realized she’d have to wait, now, until her Mistress uncovered her again.

The Queen Lines women walked out through the bustle of the incident center, separating to reach various doors. Empty of any desire except to go with them, Annie didn’t look back at the police, or the other slavewomen. Or at anyone else but the woman who owned her now.