The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The Master Gene

Chapter 16

Derrick was at the mall when the call came. At that exact he was in a seat by the fitting room as Sarah tried out a number of different maternity outfits. With the soon to come influx of cash from Kiara’s enslavement Sarah finally wanted to go out and find some good outfits to both show off her pregnancy while also looking as sexy as possible for Derrick.

Which of course was why he was stuck in the fitting room. He needed to be there to give his opinion on the various outfits Sarah had chosen. Anything he didn’t like was to be immediately discarded.

To make this faster she’d wanted him in the fitting room with her, but Derrick had nixed that since they both knew that him being in there with her would lead to nothing but more sex and he didn’t feel like dealing with the embarresment if the two of them got caught.

All of that was completely forgotten after he answered his phone. Upon hearing the news he rushed into the fitting room, completely oblivious to the fact that Sarah was dressed in nothing but her bra and panties at the time and informed her of what he’d been told. She quickly got dressed and they rushed out of the store and the mall itself.

There was a brief issue at the car as Derrick was stopped as he tried to get into the driver’s seat. Sarah had stopped him, arguing that in his current state it wasn’t the best idea for him to be driving. Plus this way he could instantly answer any phone calls that would update him on the situation. Derrick didn’t like this, but he couldn’t argue against it, so he reluctantly rode shotgun instead.

Although he’d never admit it openly, deep down he knew that she was right. The entire ride to the hospital was a blur as he tried to make sense of what had happened and what it meant. All those thoughts however slipped away when he got to the hospital and was hit with his second major shock of the day. His dad had collapsed too.

When one of the nurses informed him of this Derrick simply collapsed into the seat behind him. He was already worrying about losing his grandfather and now his dad might die too. His mind just couldn’t process this, resulting in him falling into a sort of fugue state. He didn’t know how long he was like that before he felt the grip of a hand on his shoulder. Looking up he saw Sarah with one hand gripping him, the other, holding the hand of his mother.

Seeing her in front of him, Derrick slowly stood up and stepped forward towards her. His mother did the same as they tentatively reached for each other. As their fingers touched it was like some wall burst and the two burst forward, hugging each other desperately as the tears they’d been holding in finally broke through and they both began to bawl in each others arms as they simultaneously fell to their knees on the hospital floor, completely oblivious to anyone that might be watching.

They held themselves like that for some time before a voice interrupted them. “As much as I wish you two could stay there and comfort each other for as long as you both need, we need to talk.”

Derrick knew the voice that was talking to them, so he slowly disentangled himself from his mother as they both stood up and turned to see what Karen had to say to them.

Karen looked....bad. Not that he was expecting anything different. Her eyes looked haunted and the smear marks on her makeup showed that she’d been crying just as much as they had.

“I’ll need you to come with me, since this is a bad place to discuss all of this.”

Derrick could guess what she meant when she said that. Giving his mother a nod, he took her by the arm as they supported each other as they followed Karen, while Sarah hovered just behind, seemingly unsure if she should offer her support or remain behind.

Karen led them down a series of hallways until they reached a room that was very familiar to Derrick, Kiara’s office. Karen knocked first, and entered after hearing a response from the other side.

Inside Kiara was sitting at her desk looking through paperwork when they came in. Seeing all of them she stopped what she was doing, looking at them with surprise for a moment, before shifting to a more compassionate one. “I heard about what happened. I’m....sorry.”

“I appreciate that,” his mom said/ “But I don’t understand why Karen brought me here to see you.”

“That’s because I need to make sure that no one outside the people in this room either accidentally or intentionally overhear what I’m about to tell you.”

As Karen told them this she gently grabbed mom and sat her down. Once there she looked at her carefully and said, “Okay we have a lot of ground to cover and we need to get through it as fast as possible, so I’m going to catch you up to where the rest of us are all at.”

“First, I know about our family’s gifts and I’ve known for years. Second, the reason we can talk about this in front of Kiara there is because I was running tests trying to understand how Derrick’s powers worked and accidentally enslaved her.”

Laura’s eyes bulged out, first in shock, but then even further as she realized the implications of what Karen told her. “If you’re telling me this, then I have to assume it’s because it has something to do with what happened to my Dear.”

“If that’s the word you use to talk about your Master without anyone realizing what you’re doing, then yes,” Kiara responded.

Before Laura could answer back Kiara continued. “Before we go any further I’ll start with the good news, your husband is going to live.”

As soon as Kiara said that Laura seemed to melt into her chair, as though all the stress and tension she’d been holding up to that moment slipped away, leaving her completely spent as she allowed herself to begin crying again. Derrick instantly moved to his mother’s side as he held her, tears of relief falling from both of them. Kiara wisely decided to wait until they’d had a moment to process this.

Ultimately though it was Karen who pulled them back to reality, gently nudging them with her hands until they looked back up at her. “As much as I would love to be a part of this, there’s more we need to talk about.”

“We’ll have to wait to talk about your husband’s recovery until later. For now just know that it looks like he had a stroke, so there’s really no certainty at the moment exactly what shape he’ll be in when he wakes up, or any idea if he’ll ever be back to normal again.”

“I don’t care. All I care about is that he’s alive, we’ll figure the rest out later.”

Kiara nodded in approval before continuing. “The other issue is your father-in-law, Jebediah. Unlike Jonathan, he died. At the moment it appears that he had an aneurysm, but we won’t know for sure until we’ve done a full autopsy.”

“The reason no one’s told you anything about this is because we’re still not sure if anything criminal has happened. The fact that both of them collapsed at the same time of seemingly the same issue is incredibly suspicious. The only reason I can tell any of you about any of this is because at the moment no one is aware of my relationship to Master.”

“But none of us did anything,”

“No, but Jebediah did,” Karen interjected.

“When the EMTs started working on him they found under his jacket was a vial with some liquid in it. The liquid had leaked out through a slit in the vial and while they’re still trying to find out what the liquid was, the one thing we know is that when it came in contact with his skin it left minor burns.”

Laura looked confused for a moment, before her eyes narrowed in anger as she realized just what this meant. “He tried to take me from Dear,” she said in a voice that seemed to approach absolute zero.

“What a minute,” Derrick asked. “How did grandpa even get this? The only people who know the chemicals that were used are either in this room or one of my slaves and they wouldn’t talk unless I told them to.”

Karen sighed before sitting down next to them. “It’s Ben. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Ben? What are you talking about?” Derrick exclaimed.

“It’s a process of elimination. There are only four people in this city who could possibly benefit from knowing how to activate your powers, you, dad, grandpa and Ben. You and dad are out because you already know and dad not only didn’t want to know, he wanted no one to know. Grandpa obviously wanted this, but there’s been no opportunity for him to learn it. That leaves Ben.”

“So what? It’s not like Ben had any more of an opportunity then gramps did.”

“That’s not exactly true.”

After a brief pause, Karen continued. “Once I realized Ben had to be a suspect I remembered something. Shortly after I’d revealed what I knew to you, Ben paid me a visit to catch up.”

“So? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.”

“For you, yes. You and Ben have been close for years. But I’ve barely spoken to him at all outside of family events, so him trying to catch up with me is somewhat odd. Add to that the fact that I had my notebook out...”

“Wait. You kept the notebook with all the information about our families abilities out in the OPEN!” Mom exclaimed.

“It was in my apartment, not out in the open. Besides, the thing meant absolutely nothing to anyone if they didn’t know what it was actually about and since at the time I didn’t even suspect that Ben KNEW I was aware of our families abilities, let alone that he might have been trying to find out how to force an activation.”

Derrick sat there silently as he sifted through all the information he’d just gotten in his head. Sure what Karen had said made sense, but he also knew that evidence was flimsy at best. For all that Karen was trying to look calm and collected, Derrick knew she was probably panicking inside and desperately searched for someone to blame other than herself. Besides, Derrick knew Ben. He’d never pull something like this, especially since he only had a few years before he was old enough to activate on his own.

In the end though, he knew there was only one way to prove conclusively whether Ben was involved with this or not. Taking a deep breath Derrick nodded as he rose from his seat and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” his mother asked.

“To talk to Ben of course.”

“Wait!” Karen explained.

Derrick turned around quickly as he responded. “Look, it’s the only way we’re going to clear this thing up.”

“I know that, but you shouldn’t go alone.”

“And who am I supposed to take with me, you? You’d just start by accusing him and then he’d get angry and we’d get anywhere.”

“And what if he was his own little harem with him and decides he needs to do something about you? How exactly are you going to stop him?”

“With his own harem,” Sarah interjected.

Derrick found a sly grin appearing on his face as he turned to look at Sarah. Somehow he always seemed to forget just what he had right there with him. “Well that settles that. Sarah, call the others, we’ll meet up at Judie’s before we head off to Ben’s.”

With that he quickly exited before anyone else could respond. He fast-walked his way out of the hospital, stopping only once he got to the car to wait for Sarah to catch up to him. He was surprised to see that she had an incredibly concerned look on her face. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s Amy and Amanda. I can’t seem to reach them.”

Derrick groaned in frustration. “We’re just going to have to leave them behind then. I don’t want to waste any time getting this settled.”

Sarah nodded as she opened the door to let him into the passenger side of the car. As he sat down and buckled himself in, he wondered exactly just what the two were up to that kept them from answering the phone...

“So let me get this straight. I idly talked about wanting to fuck a blonde, so you just decided, all on your own, to kidnap a pair of blonde twins, stip them naked and present them here so that I could brainwaish them into becoming my newest set of slaves?”

“Um, yes,” Amber replied, now looking very scared and nervous.

Ben left her standing like this as he inspected the two girls lying unconscious on the floor of his apartment.

He’d been packing things up in preparation of leaving this pig-sty and setting himself up at the little home his slave had above the bar. It was bigger and nicer than this place was, not to mention that it allowed him to keep an eye out for any disgusting little dyke that might be worthy of being cured of their perversion with his cock. That of course got put on hold as soon as his little goth slave-slut had dumped a pair of twin sisters, tied up and naked right in front of him.

He had to admit they were quite the specimens however. Nice large firm tits and just the right amount of ass for his taste. They were sadly clean shaven down below and one of the girls seemed to be developing a little bit of a gut, but he’d just make sure she got herself some proper exercise while the two of them grew out their pubes.

Still, there was something oddly familiar about them. He couldn’t help but feel like he’d seen them somewhere else. However, he quickly threw this out. He’d never met a pair of identical twins in his life before, so he’d probably just seen them when he’d been keeping up appearances by working at that local grocery store.

Not that it really mattered whether he knew who they were or not, he thought to himself as a nasty little grin began to form on his face as he looked over to his slut, who had to tremble in fear of his displeasure. This was a good thing of course. They should be afraid of displeasing him, as that kept them on their toes. Even then he felt he’d left her hanging long enough.

“We’ll now you’ve gone and done it. You’ve officially...gotten yourself off my shit list.”

He watched as his little slut went from shivering, to glowing as a stupid little grin came on her face. Before she could do anything else he pointed at her. “Strip, now.”

To her credit the biitch didn’t even question him as she hurriedly began to remove her clothing. Instead of watching her little show he turned and pointed to the other two cumdumpsters in the room with him. “You two, get the chemicals and once you get back here you can strip too.”

Satisfied once he saw them rush out of the room he turned again to see the his other slave had already pulled most of her clothing off. All that was left was her stockings and her bra. Before she could take those off, he reached down and forcibly grabbed her cunt. The bitch moaned in pleasure at being touched by him, though she wisely continued to follow his orders regardless.

“Now that you’ve proven you’re not fucking worthless, I think it’s time for a reward. I’m going to let you show those two cunts down there exactly what their future is going to look like....”

A constant moaning accompanied by the sound of flesh slapping against finally caused Amanda to groggily wake up. When she did she was greeted by the sight of Amber, naked of everything except a tacky dog collar around her throat, being violently fucked doggy style by Derrick’s cousin Ben.

He was gripping her ass tightly with one hand while the other was holding her hair, causing Amber’s head to be pulled back as he jammed his cock inside of her again and again as hard and fast as he could. As he did this, Amanda noticed that on either side of him was the cop lady, standing naked and at attention while she watched Ben fuck her wife right in front of her. In addition another naked woman, this one a redhead, was in the background preparing some sort of concoction, occasionally stopping to peek at the scene behind her.

Amanda couldn’t believe it. It was all so....boring.

Maybe it was all the sex she’d had with Derrick, or the ‘classes’ that Sarah put them all through but she couldn’t help but be unimpressed by Ben’s performance. All he was doing was a basic doggy-style while adding a hair pull. He wasn’t even bothering to spank her ass while he was doing this. Sure this did the job of showing his supposed dominance over Amber, but it betrayed an incredible lack of imagination.

Considering he had two other slaves to work with there were numerous more inventive ways for him to show his power. For example he could have two of the girls scissor themselves around his cock while he sucked on the third girl’s breasts. Or he could have had one girl deepthroat him while a second ate out his asshole.

Hell, at bare minimum he could have the other two girls make out in front of him to give him a show WHILE he was fucking Amber.

It was under this backdrop that Amanda struggled into a sitting position. Once there, despite her gag, she gave Ben her best ‘I’m just thoroughly unimpressed’ look that she had in her arsenal.

That got his attention. Amanda could see as an angry frown showed up on his face as he stopped his thrusting and pushed Amber to the side. Amber looked up confused as Ben stood up and stormed over to Amanda.

Amanda just continued to look at him, unimpressed as he towered over her. She then felt a sharp pain on her face as she was knocked over. Ben had slapped her.

“Not feeling so cocky now you fat bitch,” Ben said as he looked down upon her.

Inwardly Amanda was seething with rage. No one had ever done that to her before, not even Derrick, the only man she would have viewed as having the right to do that to her. But despite this, she showed none of this anger on her face. Instead, she simply struggled her way back up to a sitting position and looked up at Ben with an expression of disappointment. She was clearly asking him if this was the best he could do.

As expected this simply infuriated him even more. Ben then grabbed her face in one hand, pulling her up as he leaned down, until their faces were mere inches from each other. The look he gave her was one of anger, combined with utter contempt as he said, “oh you think you’re smart you fat little bitch. Okay, show us how smart you are,” as he ripped the gag out of her mouth.

Amanda simply smirked. Ben may think he was in control, but he’d been dancing to her strings this whole time and now her mouth was free. No doubt he thought she’d spit on him, or say something that would justify to himself hurting her some more. Instead she spoke in the most calm collected way she could at the moment.

“Don’t you think you’ve taken this a bit too far Ben?”

That shocked him. Ben let go of her face immediately and moved back a few steps as he looked at her with confusion, tinged with a little bit of fear. He clearly hadn’t expected her to know who he was and the fact that she did had rattled him. Amanda simply sat there as she waited to let him be the one to continue the conversation, a subtle power play that doubled as allowing her to buy as much time as possible for Derrick to find her.

“How do you know who I am?”

“Because I’m your cousin’s slave,” she replied, deciding that the truth was a better strategy than any lie should could tell.

The confusion on Ben’s face was all the evidence she needed that it worked.

“I don’t recall Derrick enslaving twins,” Ben retorted, seemingly on instinct.

“That’s because we didn’t know at the time that when you enslave one twin, the power links the other twin as well,” Amanda replied, speaking in a tone that implied she was explaining this to a five year old.

“So that means your....Amanda?”

“Finally figured that out huh? Well now that you know if you could untie us I promise not to tell Master that you tried to steal his slaves from him.”

Amanda then looked at him defiantly, daring him to do anything else. Ben for his part looked nervous before a sudden smirk appeared on his face. This smirk sent warning bells through Amanda’s head, telling her that she may have overplayed her hand.

“No I don’t think I will. Derrick’s clearly been far too lenient on you, so I think I’m going to break your link to Derrick and take you for myself. Then I’m going to teach you how to show some proper respect to your Master. After that, when your completely trained and begging me to be your Master forever, then I’ll consider shipping you back to Derrick so he can see what a proper slave looks like.”

Fuck. Amanda didn’t think that anything could actually break a connection between her and Derrick, but so little was known about his power at the moment that she couldn’t quite discount it either. This fact meant that despite all of her efforts to still look collected and confident, she couldn’t help but have the dread she was feeling slowly creep into her face. Sadly she knew this was happening because she could see the look of triumph on Ben’s face as he saw how badly he’d rattled her.

And that was when the doorbell rang.

For a few moments after the doorbell rang Ben went into complete panic. He had no idea who on earth was behind that door and worse yet, that fat bitch Amanda was sitting right there with her mouth completely ungagged. A simple scream for help was all that would take to bring whoever this was, smashing through his door and he had no explanation for exactly what they would see. However after looking at Amanda for a moment, he saw something in her, conflict.

Of course. She may not be his slave yet, she probably hates him in fact, but it still remained that he was her Master’s cousin. If she she screamed out now she’d bring him down yes, but she’d also put a lot of scrutiny on Derrick too and that was something he didn’t think she could do, even at the sacrifice of herself and her sister.

Seeing that he took a deep breath and calmed down. All he had to do was just sit here and stay quiet and whoever it was out there would give up and leave him alone.

That was when his phone rang.

Looking down to where he’d left his pants he growled in frustration as he reached down and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He briefly checked the number before declining, only to pause as he saw that the other person on line was Derrick himself.

Did he know what had happened, or perhaps he’d just noticed that his two little slave sluts had disappeared and he was asking him for help to find them. Either way he knew that the only way to be sure was to answer the phone. The decision made, he quickly accepted the call and put the phone to his ear.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Where are you? We need to talk.”

“We can talk right now.”

“Not over the phone. This needs to be in person.”

Fuck. Grandpa must have made his move already. Still, he should have enough time to clean things up before Derrick got here.

“I’m at my place.”

“Then why aren’t you answering the door,”

Fuck! It hadn’t occurred to him that the person at the door was Derrick himself. Now he was stuck. “Sorry, I was just busy and didn’t want to get interrupted, but if it’s you, I’ll let you in,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm before hanging up and glancing over at his cop slut to let her know she needed to open the door for him while he quickly got some pants on.

As for the rest of this, he was just going to have to tell Derrick the truth. It was going to be awkward, but he was sure that once he’d explained everything, Derrick would understand. He’d probably let him have the fat bitch here, though he’d probably have to give him his little goth slut to compensate him. That was okay with him though, he was getting bored of her anyway.

He was just grateful that underneath all his social awkwardness, Derrick was cool.

When the door opened, Derrick took the first step in, Judy and Sarah quickly following behind him. As he entered he looked to the side, expecting to see Ben at the door. What he saw instead proved everything that Karen had said was in fact absolutely true.

Standing at the side of the door, trying to keep herself hidden from the outside world was a young brunette woman. At the moment she had one hand on the door to keep it open, while the other was desperately trying to cover her naked body. Derrick registered this and in a moment of sympathy he looked forward instead in order to help with her embarrassment. As he did this, Judy quickly moved forward to place herself between him and the woman. Derrick knew this wasn’t done out of jealousy or aggression, but caution. She wasn’t threatening her, but making sure that if anything violent occured the woman would have to go through Judy in order to get to Derrick.

Derrick would have liked to have believed that there was no chance of violence breaking, but having finally taken a good look at his surroundings he could understand why. Right there in the middle of the floor, tied up and naked, was Amanda and Amy.

Amy was lying sideways in a fetal position. She seemed to still be unconscious, but somehow, Derrick could tell she was faking it. Amanda on the other hand was clearly awake. She was sitting on her knees facing Ben, but she’d turned around and was staring at Derrick with a look of utter joy and relief on her face, a look that was only slightly marred by the red mark that showed that Ben had clearly slapped her very hard.

Oddly enough it was the slap that did it for him. Seeing them naked and tied up had been something they’d done numerous times as they had wanted to experiment with some light BDSM. But that slap, right on her face, that was something he couldn’t forgive. Ben had needlessly hurt one of HIS girls and he was NOT going to let him get away.

With that thought Derrick felt himself go cold. He was still angry of course, furious even. But rather than scream and try to get into a fight with Ben, one that he wasn’t sure he’d win, he found himself looking at everything quite clinically. Ben was going to pay of course, but it would be at a time and place of his choosing. For now, he just needed to make sure he got Amy and Amanda out of this as safely as possible. Once that was done he could sit down with his girls and calmly plot out exactly when and how they were going to make Ben pay.

“You want to explain this to me?” he said in a calm voice that hid the rage inside of him.

“Hey I had nothing to do with this,” Ben exclaimed as he waved his hands in front of him. After a brief moment he then pointed over to his side. “It was this bitch over here. She grabbed them without even asking me for permission first.”

As Ben said this Sarah moved forward and began to untie Amy and Amanda. Derrick seemed to want to stop her, but refrained, possibly out of a desire to resolve this as peacefully as possible. Derrick for his part merely looked to the side at one of the other naked women in the room, specifically the one Ben was pointing to. He vaguely recognized her as Amber from the shop that Amy got her maid outfit from.

So that was how he’d kidnapped them. He’d enslaved poor Amber and made her his accomplice.

By the looks of her she was scared stiff, just pushing herself into the wall, desperately trying to escape whatever punishment she seemed to think was coming. As he did this he idly noticed that the third woman, a redhead this time, was standing there next to Amber, a simple kitchen table between them. On that table was an open jar with an unknown liquid.

Technically unknown. It didn’t take a genius for Derrick to guess just what liquid was in that jar.

“So Amber just did this all on her own then, huh?”

“Who?” Ben asked, clearly confused.

“Are you telling me you don’t even know her name?” Derrick asked as he pointed over at Amber.

“Please, you really expect me to remember ever little slave slut I’ve fucked recently.”

Derrick personally thought that was the least he could do, but decided not to say it out loud, as it might make it harder for him right now.

Waving his hand to indicate that he was changing subjects Derrick said, “Anyways, there’s a reason I came down here. I need to talk to you about Grandpa.”

“He all I know was that Gramps said he was going to get himself a new slave,” Ben replied, sheepishly.

Ben knew. Of that, Derrick was absolutely certain. Ben knew that Grandpa was going to try and enslave mom and run off and he still helped him do it. Derrick had no idea how he could have been so wrong about Ben. How could he not have seen just what a monster his cousin was all this time? Or was it that he’d been okay before, but the allure of having as many utterly devoted slaves as you wanted was enough to twist into something unrecognizable. Ultimately, Derrick didn’t really care. He just knew he needed to stop Ben no matter what.

“Then it’s a good thing I got here in time then,” Derrick said, still somehow sounded calm and reasonable despite the fury threatening to break out and cause him to do something he wouldn’t exactly regret, but wouldn’t help his situation at the moment.

“Why?” Ben asked.

“Grandpa’s dead.”

When he heard that, Ben went pale. “What?” he asked, shaken.

“Grandpa tried to enslave Mom. The moment he did he got into a tug-of-war with Dad, Dad ended up in the hospital and Grandpa didn’t last long enough to even make it there.”

“Oh,” Derrick said, the implications of what might have happened to him had he continued on uninterrupted.

As Ben pondered this new piece of information, Sarah finished untying Amy and Amanda, who immediately rushed over to Derrick, clinging to him as hard as they could. Derrick reached around to comfort them, but never took his eyes off Ben.

That was why he could notice the annoyance in his face as he saw how close they were with Derrick. He also noticed as eyes lightened up, the indication that some idea had flickered through his rotten core.

“Still, even though we can’t link with each other’s slaves doesn’t mean we can’t still swap them around.”

“What?”

“Look,” Ben said, his voice getting friendlier as he laid out his plan. “These bitches will do anything we tell them to do. So all you need to do is tell one of them to obey anything the person you want to loan them to says. Once that’s done we can swap them around anytime we get bored.”

Derrick took a deep breath as he pondered what Ben had just told him. Technically he was right of course, though the thought of leaving any of his girls under Ben’s care utterly disgusted him. Still, a thought occurred to him as he looked over at Amber.

“It’s a thought, but you still did try to steal my slaves. So how about this, since Amber was the one who took my little twins, you hand her over to me for the week to teach her a...lesson. If she turns out to be good enough, I might just consider trading for her permanently if you get my drift.”

Ben leered over at Amanda as he heard Derrick lay this out. It was apparent that he really believed Derrick was actually going to hand one of his girls over to him. In reality this was solely about saving Amber. He knew that as soon as he left this apartment, Ben was going to make Amber pay for embarrassing him. At least with this, he could try to shield her.

He wished he could also save the other girls, but there was only so much he could do at the moment.

Thankfully the offer seemed to satisfy Ben. “I knew you were cool,” he said as he reached out his hand towards Derrick. Derrick reached out and shook hands with him as well, pretending to seal the deal between them.

It was at that moment that a clear liquid suddenly flew out and splashed onto both their hands.

Derrick and Ben then had only a short moment to look over and see Amber holding the now empty jar before pain exploded into both their heads.