The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Pain. Pain and weariness, all tinged in red.

Just managing to breathe was an accomplishment; the muscles in her chest, like every other part of her body, sang a symphony of agony and anguish with each labored breath. The slow but steady beating of her heart sent a pulse that resonated inside her temples, as well as behind her eyes, such that even with them closed, the vision of the crystal seemed to pulse with energy.

Awareness of her surroundings followed slowly, her dazed mind taking an eternity to interpret the signals her body was giving her. Cold. She was cold... the air blowing across her flesh revealing that she was naked. Her sense of smell returned just before touch, and she realized dimly that she was outside... lying not on a bed mattress, but on a bed of grass. Confusion muddled her thinking; had she not been lying on a bed just moments ago? Or, was that only a dream, and the reality was the cave she’d been brought to? She remembered both, at the same time, and pain flared brightly at the conflict, nearly undoing her. It passed, eventually, as she focused more of her mind on the here-and-now... yes, she was lying in grass. Outside. Naked.

She needed to see, needing to look around and get her bearings, but she was so drained... it felt as if she’d just run a marathon after being awake for nine days, carrying a bulldozer on her back. She needed to rest... needed to sleep longer and recover her strength, but... she had to see. She needed to know what had happened, where she was, what was going on. Spending the small reserve of energy she’d regained before awakening, she cracked open an eye.

Light beamed its way into her eyes, into her brain, brighter than a supernova, burning hotter than the brightest laser she’d ever seen. Her eyes clamped shut again, but the brightness continued to shine inside her, scattering what little was left of her consciousness. With a weak groan, Lacie swooned, her mind spiraling back to the events of her recent past...

The car arrived moments later, going through yet another checkpoint and entering the gates of what appeared to be merely an abandoned depot. The driver, however, rolled down his window and placed an ID card in the slot of a panel just outside of the car, and the car shuddered slightly as the ground in front of the building began to slope downwards. Lacie blinked in surprise, glancing from Jerry to her father, as the car continued on, driving into an underground path leading to a hidden subterranean complex. Several soldiers stood at attention by as they passed, making the whole trip seem even more surreal.

“I almost feel like I should be humming the theme to ‘Get Smart’,” Gene quipped, trying to hid his nervousness.

Lacie bit back a reply. If anything, she was more nervous than he was. Her father had remained completely vague about where they were going, saying only that it was a matter of life and death. Jerry, likewise, had been extremely close-mouthed on the subject, only willing to divulge the fact that it directly involved a incident at the facility they’d just been taken to, where a joint project between the military and the Department of Energy was going on. At first she’d thought they’d wanted her for her expertise and knowledge in theoretical quantum mechanics, but the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced they didn’t need her knowledge, they needed HER.

Parking a few minutes later, they were all led inside the base interior, and ushered through a maze of hallways to a large circular office. A tall grey haired man sat behind a desk, a list of files on his desk, one of which he was reading when they entered the room. He continued to read for several minutes longer, ignoring their presence, and the sound of Jerry repeatedly clearing his throat, until, finally, he finished with the file, placing it back down on the desk.

“So, I see you’ve arrived,” he said curtly. “Good. I’m Colonel Jack Cutter, the head of this facility. Excuse the lack of pleasantries, but I need to cut to the chase. We have a situation here, and frankly, it’s escalating beyond our ability to contain it. Mrs. Frasier, you were brought here because not only are you the source of our current problem, you’re also the answer.” He stood up and walked over to meet them, shaking their hands. “I’ll assume Agent Dawson has filled you in on the essentials: that an unknown form of radiation detected several weeks ago has had an adverse effect on one of the special projects being researched here, an effect that, if not contained, could devastate this planet.”

“Aye, we were told that, in so many words,” Gene replied, scowling with his arms crossed. “But yer man there was a bit cagey on the specifics. What does any of this have to do with us? You said that my Lacie was both the problem and the answer? Exactly what does that mean?”

Jerry sighed deeply, stepping forward. “Here. Take a look at my ARSE.” He reached around behind him, to his back pocket.

Gene blinked. “What did you say to me, ye smarmy bastard?!?”

“Easy, son. Calm down, Eugene,” James said, placing a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder. He handed him a small device the size of a large calculator. “ARSE stands for Ambient Radiation Scanning Equipment. He wanted you to look at this.” He turned it on and pointed it at himself and at Gene. “I had this with me when I came to your home a few weeks ago. I’d been taking scans of the area, and had forgotten it was in my pocket. When I was leaving, I gave Lacie a hug as always, That’s when I felt the buzzing. Once I left the house, I checked the scanner, thinking maybe I’d broken it by sitting on it or something. Indeed it must have been broken, because it was showing the area was hot with the very radiation we were looking for! I had my suspicions, but it wasn’t able to confirm it until the night you brought Lacie back from the stadium. I scanned her with a new scanner while we were talking just to be sure. I checked the readings three times... but there was no doubt. Lacie was definitely the source.”

As James spoke, the Colonel watched Lacie’s face studying her reaction. He nodded. “And I notice, Mrs. Frasier, that all this isn’t much of a surprise to you. I’m guessing that you might know something about what’s been going on here?”

Lacie shook her head. “Sorry, Colonel. I honestly have no idea what’s been happening here, or how I could be a danger to you... to anyone.” She took a deep breath and turned to face her husband. “But... as for the other thing... he’s right. I’m... I’m not Lacie. Not YOUR Lacie, anyway. I’m from... a different world, a place that is so very much like this world... and yet so very different.” She swallowed, feeling a lump in her throat. “I didn’t mean to deceive you. It’s just... I LOVE you, Gene. You, dad, the kids... this is the life I’ve always wanted. I never wanted to hurt anyway... I just wanted to be happy.”

Gene stood there for a moment, silent, weighing her words. “Ah... I see. I... I don’t know what... to say.” He turned away staring at the wall, and Lacie felt her heart break. “I’m going to need a little time to process this...”

“Ahem... sorry to interrupt this family moment,” Col. Cutter said grimly, “but we need to get back on track here. This project I was referring to... several years ago, some of our people unearthed a chunk of unknown material taken, we believe, from a chunk of meteorite that crash landed on earth millions of years ago. Our scientists performed all sorts of tests on the damned thing, but never could figure out exactly what it was made of. They did find out that it absorbed energy... ALL kinds of energy, everything from radio waves to gamma rays. They also found out that certain frequencies of energy cause the stone to react in some... well, mighty peculiar ways.”

He tapped a button on his desk and a view screen slid open. “Of the ten scientists working on that particular experiment, seven managed to escape harm. These three were within five feet of the gem, which, I again stress to you, until this point seemed perfectly safe.”

The view screen came to life, showing full color images of what Lacie could only assume had once been the three men. Presented in slideshow form, the horror revealed in each image grew, showing the terror on each man’s face up to the end. Jerry swore, covering his mouth, while her father merely averted his eyes. Eugene stared at it, dumbstruck, as enraptured by the sight as he was disgusted. Lacie, in her life as Omega Girl, had seen many foul and terrible things, but the last image shown nearly made her vomit. Shuddering in disgust, she turned away.

“We believe the material’s effect altered the fabric of time and space around the men,” James said, continuing where the Colonel had left off. “The effect was uncontrolled, totally random, and completely unstable. And you’ve seen the effect. Imagine for a moment that the laws of physics had, for an instant, been rewritten, that gravity had no meaning, that solids were now liquids, and vice versa, that outside and inside were reversed. Or, in Dr. Daniels’ case, that time was flowing rapidly forward in one spot on your body, and slowly backwards on another spot.”

“Bloody hell,” Gene murmured, wisely keeping his eyes away from the screen. “I hope ye got rid of the damned thing and destroyed it.”

“No,” the Colonel replied wearily, clicking off the view screen. “Unfortunately, the damned thing is practically indestructible. We tried crushing it under more than one hundred tons of pressure and the blasted thing didn’t so much as crack. Not to mention that even if they had been crazy enough to try destroying it in a nuclear blast, the blasted thing absorbs radiation. So... they did the only thing they could do at the time: the sealed it away in a vault for the next thirty years.” Standing up from his desk, he moved to the side door and walked out, waiting for the others to follow.

“Okay. I understand that this... this THING of yours is dangerous,” Lacie said, following the Colonel down the hallway to a large reinforced steel door. “Your little picture show convinced me of that. What I don’t understand is what any of this has to do with me, and why, after all this time studying the thing you had me brought here, today!”

“Step inside,” the Colonel said, sliding his security card in the electronic door reader, causing the door to open. “You can see for yourself.”

Lacie entered, then gasped in surprise, stopping in midstep at the sight before her. The room was all metal with a concrete floor, looking like nothing more than a simple storage room—until you looked at the far right corner. In that corner, normalcy ended, and insanity and chaos made their presence felt. An area of the room was gone, replaced on one section by what appeared to be a view of outer space, a dark inky void lit only by the flickering of a few stars. Another section seemed to show an ocean view, but an ocean on another world with yellow water and strange alien marine life floating calmly by. A third section showed dim yellow orange flames, shining with a soft but constant light but no heat. The last section showed only a mass of brown earth. One by one, they all stared in amazement at the sight of the break in reality, trying to wrap their minds around what they were actually seeing.

“Pretty damned amazing, huh?” a female voice said, coming up from behind. “Sometimes, just staring at it, I don’t know what I feel more of—awe or fear.”

Lacie turned, frowning at the lovely young brunette in the white lab coat and glasses that had entered behind them. Her voice sounded very familiar, and though she didn’t resemble anyone she knew at first glance, the longer she stared at her, the more she looked like someone she knew.

“Personally, Dr. LaSilvas, I think we should all be feeling abject terror,” the Colonel replied. “It’s a wonder no one was killed this time around.”

LaSilvas?!? Lacie thought, doing a double-take. No... it couldn’t be her... and yet, that voice, that body shape... change the hair and the skin tone... Shaking her head in wonder, she extended her hand. “Your first name wouldn’t by an chance be Sarah, would it?”

“Yes, actually. And you must be Lacie Frasier,” Dr. LaSilvas said, taking the hand, shaking his firmly. “Sorry to have to meet under such troubling circumstances... but as you can see, things have gotten rather serious here.” She blinked, peering with concern at Lacie’s face. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Lacie laughed ruefully. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Dr. LaSilvas here is our head researcher,” Colonel Cutter announced, “on loan from DARPA. She’s been here since the beginning of the project, and she knows more about this case than anyone else. She is of the opinion that you, Mrs. Frasier, are the key to containing the stone’s power.”

“Stone?” Lacie asked, feeling a shiver race down her spine. “What kind of stone are we talking about here?” she asked, already knowing the answer and dreading it.

“This stone,” Sarah replied, gesturing to a small monitor at her left. “A small red faceted stone, resembling a rough cut scarlet diamond or ruby. If my calculations are correct, and they usually are, the extra-dimensional energy you’re emitting is what’s causing the stone to twist time and space around like. And there’s only one way to stop it.”

Lacie turned to face her, feeling as if the floor had dropped away underneath her. “And... what way is that?”

“By sending you back where you came from,” the doctor replied. “Back to her own dimension... your own world.”

Awareness returned easier and faster this time. Lacie groaned, cracking hey eyes open again, wincing slightly at the light, but sufficiently rested to endure the shock this time. Focusing took a few seconds, but when her eyes adjusted, she found herself lying atop a hill in the middle of an empty plain. She managed to sit up, her muscles, stiff from lying sprawled on the ground for so long, protesting. She felt a pain in her side; an indent pressed into her flesh from lying atop a small rock. Her mind was still a bit fuzzy, and moments from her other existence kept bleeding into her reality. Or what she assumed was her reality.

How the hell did I end up naked on a hill in the middle of nowhere? Where am I? How long was I out?

Past, present, and future were still jumbled up. Her clearest, most recent memories were of that other world, where she’d lived happily with her husband and two children, but she also remembered this world, a world where she had fought against evil, flying through the sky with the wind in her hair, saving people, and helping the helpless. That thought brought with it a flood of other images: a young man’s face, familiar, but horribly twisted and disfigured; another man, tall, normal looking, except that half of his body was clad in bright gleaming chrome metal; a young brown haired woman, her otherwise lovely face twisted in hatred; and a large powerful man with pale skin, dressed all in black, wearing a cloak...

The haze in Lacie’s mind lifted, and finally, the chaos within her mind ceased as her memories realigned. She remembered now, remembered what had happened to her, what she had done, the choice she’d been given, and the choice she’d made. She recalled that other life, that blissful existence, that, even at its worst moments, still seemed like nirvana compared to a life without the family she’d obtained. She closed her eyes, letting her mind recapture them once more—adorable wee Katie, feisty little Jimmy, her beloved husband Gene, and of course, her loving father...

With an effort, she forced the memories away. She had to focus on the here and now... wherever HERE was. Regaining her feet, glanced again at her surrounding. Grass, grass, and more grass spread out as far as she could see; no sign of buildings, or roads, or even people. She was completely alone.

“Well, not COMPLETELY alone.”

Lacie squealed in surprise, whirling around. “Eva?!” she gasped, staring at the familiar whit clad blonde. “You’re alive? But... I thought...”

The woman sighed, shaking her head. “Eva is dead. I’m her twin sister, Anastasia. I believe you already know my son, Parker.” She removed a small backpack from her behind her, tossing it to Lacie. “Sorry if the fit isn’t what you’re used to, I didn’t know your exact size.”

Lacie nodded, slipping on the T-shirt and jeans. “They’re fine. Thank you. But... what are you doing here? And how did you know I’d be here?”

Ana smirked, looking so very much like her twin. She tapped her temple lightly. “Psychic, remember? Eva specialized in reading minds, but my specialty was reading the future. I knew you’d be here, at this time, and that you would be needing someone to help get you up to speed.” She gestured at the backpack again. “If you’re hungry, I packed some sandwiches and some juice boxes in the zipper compartments on the sides.”

“Sandwiches? Juice Boxes?”

Ana shrugged. “I like to be prepared.”

“Well, now that you mention it. I’m starving,” Lacie replied, taking out several sandwiches. She bit into one, then groaned in delight. “Mmmmm! Oh, that’s soooo good! I feel like I haven’t eaten in over a week!”

“Probably closer to three days,” Ana said, taking a sandwich for herself. “That’s about how long you’ve been unconscious.”

“What?” Lacie asked, nearly choking. Calming herself, she swallowed before continuing. “Okay. I guess you should fill me in on what’s been going on while I eat.”

“Very well. For the past few months now, I’ve been having these... really strange, really disturbing images... chess pieces, pawns, knights, and rooks... flashes, bits and pieces, always jumbled and always incomplete. Eventually, I saw enough to figure out that someone powerful was manipulating events, controlling seemingly random actions, in an effort to bring about some great catastrophe... but I couldn’t see who was doing it, or what the big event was.” She sighed. “Then, shortly thereafter, I fell under the control of a devious, unscrupulous woman named Venus Satore, who tried to use my sister and myself in a last ditch effort to stop my son Parker from ruining her plans to enslave the city. He managed to prevail, and in the end, freed us from Satore’s control. On the bright side, however, contact with her mind enabled me to piece together the identity of the mysterious man from my visions, the hidden puppet master pulling everyone’s strings.”

Lacie nodded grimly. Jeremiah King. Yeah... tall dark and gruesome with a chess fetish. It figures that he’d be the one behind Satore’s twisted little plot as well as my own troubles. She probably thought herself a Queen, but turned out to be nothing more than just another pawn.

“Things sort of snowballed after that,” Ana continued. “His manipulation of you and your situation had you on a downward spiral of destruction. I tried to get a hold of you, to tell you what was going on, but you moved around too much back then, never staying still long enough for me to contact you. Then I tried warning my sister and my son, trying both to convince them that you weren’t responsible for what was happening, and trying to warn them that something big was approaching.” She sighed, shaking her head. “At this point, I still didn’t know what was coming, only that it was going to be very bad. And trying to convince them that ‘something’ was going to happen ‘sometime’ to ‘someone’ and that they needed to be on guard, didn’t exactly do much for my case.”

Lacie nodded in sympathy. “I guess you must have felt a bit like Cassandra, trying to warn Troy of its impending doom.”

“I called them hours before your friend Alpha’s attack, begging with them to get out of the city,” Ana said wearily. “But, of course, being the noble selfless heroes that they are, they decided to stay and try to get the people evacuated, to try and save as many of them as possible. But it was all for naught. The entire city was destroyed in the blast... along with my son and my twin sister.”

Lacie hung her head in shame. If I’d done what I was supposed to and stopped Dougie when I had the chance, they’d still be alive. Damn. It’s not your fault, Ana... it’s mine.

“Neither of us are to blame, Lacie,” Ana said softly, squeezing her hand gently. “If anyone’s to blame for what happened, its Jeremiah King, the orchestrator of what’s happening in this world right now. Speaking of which... he’s been busy while you were... away. The first thing he did when he emerged with his newfound power was to conquer Europe. They fought, of course, using tanks, guns, missiles, aircraft... throwing everything at him but the proverbial kitchen sink.”

Sighing deeply, she knelt down on the grass next to Lacie. “For all the good it did... the outcome was obvious even at the beginning. Towards the end, a large number of Supers joined the fight, but they were just as ineffective as the military. He gave them all a choice: submit or perish. In the end, the countries all surrendered, swearing allegiance to him. Soon after, Japan, China, and the other countries of the world fell, one by one. He saved America for last, making a game out of it, even challenging all of the remaining Supers, hero and villain alike, promising to give up all claim on the other conquered countries to the victor if he was defeated.”

“And let me guess. The reason you’re here with me right now is that no one else managed to do it?”

Ana nodded. “What could they do against someone with that kind of power? A man that can twist reality into anything he wants just by wishing it? The other didn’t have a chance.”

“And you think I do?!?” Lacie nearly shouted, leaping to her feet. “Look at me! I’m a FAILURE! I couldn’t stop him back when I had my POWERS... and now I don’t even have THAT going for me! I’m not Omega Girl anymore... I’m just... just... plain old Lacie Ann Frasier.” She sank wearily back down to the grass again. “I don’t have the power to help anyone, anymore,” she said softly, “not even myself...”

“On the contrary,” Ana countered, “you have the potential to help save us all. Reading the future is a tricky thing; at times its fluid, keeping one always guessing by changing, staying constantly in flux, never letting you see the outcome until it’s too late... other times, it shows itself so clearly, so forcefully, so undeniably solid that nothing you can do can change it. This time, the future I see is somewhere between the two extremes— two separate possible futures. In one, you fight King and defeat him, ending his reign of terror once and for all. In the other...” she shrugged, “you do not. But both outcomes ride on whether or not you have the guts to face him, one on one, on equal terms.”

Lacie laughed derisively. “Equal terms? He has ULTIMATE power! He can literally wipe me out of existence with a thought, thanks to that stupid chunk of rock he has... and the power he took from me. How the hell am I supposed to fight him on equal terms?”

Calmly, Ana walked over to the spot where Lacie had been lying. Kneeling down, she searched for a moment, then stood up. In her hand was the ‘stone’ she’d been lying on while unconscious, the lump that had left an impression against her flesh. Opening Lacie’s palm, she placed it in her hand. “With that,” she said, gesturing to the stone, “you have a fighting chance.”

“But... why does she have to go back?” Eugene asked stubbornly, refusing to accept the truth even from Lacie herself. “I mean, couldn’t you just... I dunno... send it to the bottom of the ocean or something? Just put it somewhere where it cannae do any harm!”

“It’s just not that simple,” Sarah repeated wearily. “The kind of energy she’s emitting is not restricted by distance. Interdimensional energy can’t be blocked or shielded against by matter from this dimension, like steel or concrete... or a few million gallons of water. In fact, the only reason we’re all safe right now is because of the quantum phase energy shielding of the vault currently housing the crystal... and even that is starting to fail!”

“Well... what about sending it back out into space, then?” Gene countered. “Send the blasted thing back where it came from, and leave Lacie here,” he said, looking at her again, “where she belongs.”

Lacie took Gene’s hand, squeezing it lightly, just managing to keep the tears at bay. “Thank you for that, love,” she said softly. “You have no idea how deeply I needed to hear those words from you... to know... even knowing that I’m not your Lacie...”

“You ARE my Lacie,” Gene insisted, reaching up to caress her cheek. “I dinnae care where yer from or how you got here. All that matters is that I love you... and I dinnae wish to be without you.”

“You’re not hearing me,” Dr. LaSilvas tried again. “Distance doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. I know you love each other... but the facts are the facts. Your wife is... an anomaly. Her very presence in our universe is affecting the stone which is, as far as we know, just a smaller piece of a larger meteorite that’s out there somewhere. The longer she stays here, the more effect her quantum energy signature has on the stone. If we launched it into a rocket today and sent it out past Pluto, past the edge of our galaxy, my calculations show it would still continue to react to the energy she’s emitting. It would take longer, sure, months, maybe even years... but eventually the distortions effect would be large enough to affect everyone here on earth from wherever the stone ended up... only then it would be too massive to shield ourselves from it.”

Lacie closed her eyes, steeling her resolve. “Gene... she’s right. I have to go back.”

Gene shook his head. “No. There has to be another solution—”

“There’s no other way, love,” she said quietly. “I was trained as a physicist. I understand exactly what she’s saying. Even if you put the stone on a rocket and sent it to the other side of the galaxy—assuming the stone’s distortions didn’t mangle or destroy the rocket before it got that far— it would only be a matter of time before we were faced with the same problem again, only much worse. This energy I seem to be emitting... Sarah is right. Distance wouldn’t matter. The effect of continued exposure would have an exponentially increasing effect. It would probably take years... we might be old and grey by then, but eventually the distortion effect would be big enough to hit us again. And do we really want to put everyone in jeopardy in danger just to keep us together?”

“I dinnae care! I want ye to stay.” Eugene pulled Lacie close, kissing her deeply. “I dinnae care that yer not MY Lacie... that yer from another world. All I know is that you are every bit the woman I fell in love with all those years ago! I’ve known you... all my life. You are my wife, for better or worse. Maybe you haven’t the same mind... but I know in my heart o’ hearts, you have the same soul!” He laughed ruefully. “After all we just went though... after all I did to get you back, yer thinking of leaving me again, for good?”

Now the tears did fall. “Oh, love... do you think I WANT to go back? You have no idea... no concept... of how alone I was! Of what I’ve lost back in that other world... of what I’m losing NOW by going back!” Sobs wracked her small frame, and Gene held her tighter. “Oh God... I’d give almost ANYTHING to stay here with you... to see the man Jimmy’s going to grow up to be... to watch darling Katie grow up and get married to someone as special as the man I was lucky enough to find...”

“Then stay,” Gene pleaded, his own tears falling. “Just stay. We’ll find some other way of getting rid of that stone... or some way to shield it from this energy you’re giving off. There has to be some other way, something these guys havenae thought of yet. Give me some time... and I’ll build a containment unit for it! I swear, I willnae eat or sleep ‘til it’s done! I’ll put all of my best people at the plant in it. Anything it takes! Just don’t... don’t let them separate us again. Stay with me, love... just stay with me!”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, Gene. I’m so sorry... but it’s because of my love for you that I HAVE to go. I could never live with myself if something happened to you or the kids because of my being here. I just... couldn’t. I’m sorry.” Leaning forward, she kissed him lovingly even as she pulled free of his grasp. Wiping her eyes with her sleeve, she turned to face the others, who had stood quietly by, watching. She nodded to Sarah. “I’m ready. Take me to the vault.”

Inside, alone with Dr. LaSilvas, they stared at the gem, floating several feet in the air, wrapped in a ball of sparking electrical energy. They stood silently for several moments before Sarah broke the silence.

“You’re pretty brave,” she said softly, tapping away at the console in front of her. “I know it’s not much consolation right now... but I really think this is the most selfless, most heroic thing anyone’s ever done. Walking away from your family and loved ones like this... I don’t think I could do it, if I were in you place.”

Lacie shook her head. “You know, that’s really kinda funny, coming from you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Sarah asked, frowning.

Lacie laughed ruefully. “It’s really strange... the more things change, the more they stay the same.” She sighed again. “Let’s just say that I knew you, in another life... in that other world. Well... another VERSION of you, anyway. Never really saw her as much of... well, as an intellectual, let alone an expert in Applied Theoretical Quantum Mechanics. And yet... I can see her very clearly in you.” She shook her hard. “That other you... She knows all about sacrifice... believe me. But through it all, she twisted, she bent, but she never broke.” She managed a small smile. “My own world is really kinda screwed up right now... but I can’t hide from it anymore. If it weren’t for her example... I don’t think I would have the courage to go back there now, and face my own demons.”

Sarah stood there for a moment, chewing over her words. Then: “Well... I can only guess that other ME must be pretty extraordinary to have had such an impact on you... but I think she’s pretty lucky as well, having a friend like you.”

“We’re not really...” Lacie began, then paused. “That close. Frankly, I’m not really very close to anyone back there, anymore. I... went through some things, and kinda pushed away anyone and everyone that I considered a friend. But... hell, if I manage to survive the next couple of days once I’m back there, I plan to try and make things right with all the people I pushed away.”

Sarah checked the reading again, then tapped a few more keys. “I’m releasing the shield in exactly fifteen seconds. As soon as the field dissipates, you have to grab the stone. Once you make physical contact with the stone, you should be transported back to your own home dimension... in theory, anyway. Just focus on where you need to go. Don’t think about anything else. Focus on going back to your own reality... back to your world.”

Lacie nodded. “I’ll try. Thanks you... for not making this as difficult as it could have been.” She waved goodbye, then smirked as Dr. LaSilvas reciprocated with a wiggle of her fingers. “I was right. The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

The electric field dissipated, and Lacie reached out, grabbing the small stone with her right hand. Closing her eyes, she thought fervently, For you, Gene... and my children... send me back. Take me back... to that messed up world that is my true home...

Lacie stared at the glittering stone in Anna’s hands for a long moment, then closed her eyes. “Okay. So... how do we do this? How do I tap into its power?”

“It’s not that hard,” Ana said slowly, “but before you can even begin to use its power you’re going to have to reclaim your own powers as Omega Girl.” Lacie turned, opening her eyes to stare at her. “Despite everything that happened to you, despite what you gave up in order to obtain your own personal Nirvana, that power has remained inside you. It’s a part of you, Lacie... as much as who you are as your left hand, or your hair, or your eyes.” She smirked. “I won’t kid you. It’s locked down pretty deep inside you right now... but it IS there.”

“And I suppose you just happen to know how I can bring it out again?”

“Actually, yes,” Ana replied, holding out the stone in front of her. Moving slowly, she lowered her hands... but the stone remained, floating in place, spinning slowly in midair. “I need to enter your mind... tap deep into your subconscious, and remove the blocks that are keeping you from accessing your powers. And... since my telepathy isn’t nearly as strong as my sister’s, and your mind is somewhat resistant... I need to put you into a trance.”

Lacie, already half-dazed from the spinning jewel, jerked herself awake. “What? You want me to WILLINGLY surrender control of my mind to you?” Her hands clenched into fists, and she had to force herself back to calmness. “I’m sorry. It’s really hard to muster up a bit of trust these days... all things considered. I mean... I trusted your sister, trusted her more than ANYONE... and even though she was trying to help me, she STILL took advantage of me, USED me for her own enjoyment...”

“I’m not my sister,” Ana said quietly. “For what it’s worth, I happen to know that she regretted nothing in this life more than she regrets destroying your trust in her.” She sighed deeply, looking down. “I know how tempting it can be... how darkly seductive it is to be able to reach out with your mind, a little twist here, a little tweak there, and make that person you’ve been quietly lusting for putty in your hands, to do with whatever you wish.” A slow flush crept into her cheeks. “I’m not condoning what she did to you. I’m just saying I understand how it feels... from both sides.” Facing Lacie once more, she continued. “I don’t have any hidden agenda here. I’m not trying to play games with your head. I don’t just want to help you... I NEED to. With my help, you’ll have the power to undo all of the changes he’s made, to repair the damage that’s been done to our world.”

Lacie considered for a moment. If she’s right... I could rewrite the past. I could go back and fix all those mistakes. Eva, Parker... everyone who died in Dougie’s attack... Dougie himself! I could go back and make it so that none of it even happened. I... I could keep Eugene from leaving to go to the Argentum space station. And all I have to do is let down my defenses... and give Eva’s sister free reign inside my mind.

She nodded. “Okay. I’m trusting you. Even if you do have your own agenda... it’ll be worth it if I can fix everything. Do it.”

Ana rolled her eyes. “Thanks again for the vote of confidence. My sister always said you were overly cynical.” She gestured to the floating, spinning stone once more, and this time, Lacie let it capture her gaze.

“Good. Very good,” Ana commented extending her awareness, pushing it outward then inward, linking her mind to Lacie’s even as she continued to speak. “You’re very receptive. Just relax, Lacie. Relax... and let yourself drift.” Sighing softly, Lacie obeyed, letting her mind relax completely...