The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Sole Survivor

By Stub

mc mf ff md in sf

Chapter 9 — Dust in the Wind

“Alex?”

“Hmmm?”

“I need a job.”

I looked down at the top of Lani’s head. She was curled up on the couch, legs tucked under her, nestled in the crook of my arm with her head on my chest. We’d been watching a vid at our new digs in Palo Alto, trying to decompress after a long day. I shifted on the cushion to get a better angle for a conversation, and she lifted her head to look at me.

“Sure, Lani,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

She sat up straight. “Really! You mean I can...really! Wow. OK, um...” Her grin faded, and her forehead wrinkled as she thought about it. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know, really. I mean, I was going to school for chemistry, and that was fun, but a freshman chemistry student isn’t really a big weapon in the fight against the aliens.”

She straddled my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck, and giving me a short, intense kiss. “What do you think I should do? I love being around you, and I know that helping you is really helping all of us, but I feel like I can do more stuff to support you than just cooking and sex.” She ground her hips on me, causing my cock to take notice. “Even though those are my two best talents.”

“Well,” I said. “Let’s think about it. Do you want to do research? Work with people? Maybe even just study—you can work on your degree here you know. I have a feeling I’ll have no problem getting you into Stanford or Berkeley.”

She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I’ll go back to school when this is over. I want to do something that’s going to help us free the planet. There’s nothing more important than that.”

I gave her slim body a hug. “You’re absolutely right. OK, then, you know about everything we have going on right now. There’s a lot of projects in the pipeline. Where would you be most valuable to the cause? Because if you’re serious about helping, I’m going to squeeze every bit of effort I can from you.”

“Humph. Don’t try to threaten me, Mr. Drummond. I know you’re a big softie. You’d only squeeze me when we’re fucking.”

I laughed. “OK, but remember, Lani, we’re trying to take back a whole planet—almost nine billion people—with only me, you five girls, and a mad scientist that we can’t trust. If you’re in, you’ve got to be in with both feet.”

She frowned briefly at the mention of Anatoly, then brightened up. “You know I will, Alex. I’ll do it for you, if nothing else, but I really do want to help more.” She snapped her fingers. “I know,” she said. She got off my lap and knelt on the floor between my legs. She took my large hands in her smaller ones and pressed them to the sides of her head, then looked intently into my eyes. “OK, command me.”

I blinked. She was right that I could do it. I still had the power of command with the women I’d freed; I just hadn’t felt the need to use it. Instead of giving her any commands though, I leaned down and kissed my lovely island girl. She moaned and kissed me back for a second, then pulled away.

“I’m serious!” she said. She gave me a pout and crossed her arms.

I had to laugh again. “I know you are Lani. We’ll work that part out, I promise. But first we need to figure out what you can do.”

Her grin was back. “You mean other than swallow your big cock right down my throat?”

I coughed and blushed a bit. “Yes, Lani, other than swallowing my cock.”

“Hmmm, let’s see...well, I’m pretty good with computers. But then, you’ve got Amber, and she’s already a really good programmer. And Jill is an engineer. And Scarlett’s great at managing projects. And Kara...well, she’s just got all of that Arbiter stuff in her head.” Her frown threatened to return. “I don’t know, Alex. What can I do? Help me, please?”

I had to think about this. I was right when I said that it was the seven of us against an alien race, so everyone needed to contribute whatever they could. But I’d always considered Lani just a pretty, young woman who lived with me, and cooked wonderful meals, not really as a skilled part of the “war effort.”

“Well, lets see. We’ve got a lot of tech projects going on—almost twelve hundred drones working on...I think eleven different projects. Scarlett and Param are handling most of that, just keeping things coordinated, and headed in the right direction. Kara, Amber, and Jill are working on the translation program, trying to find a connection between the alien language, and the signals being broadcast to the planet, so we can hopefully reverse the effects of the mind control. And Anatoly is working on...something. I don’t know what, and he won’t share. I’m not even sure where his lab is; he just disappears to his secret lair, and reappears when he feels like it.”

“It sounds like you’ve got everything under control then,” Lani said. “I guess I’m not needed...”

It was sad to see her so discouraged. She was the sunniest person on the planet.

“Well, there is something that you could start on,” I said. She perked up immediately and gave me her full attention. “We’re thinking tactically right now, trying to counter the immediate problems presented by the aliens. But once we get some of these tech projects complete, we’ll need to take a larger view. The thing that we’re really lacking right now is intelligence.”

“Intelligence?” she said. “You mean like spying?”

“Well, maybe. But it’s more than that. We need to collect a lot more data about the aliens, and get it cross referenced properly, so that when it comes time to plan something like an assault, or a nethack, we’ve got the best intel possible to work from.”

“So, Lani, how about this,” I said. “I want you to become my alien expert. I want you to launch a research project that will collect every bit of data, no matter how small, about the Chrxjthal, and use it to get a better picture of the enemy.”

Her eyes were shining with excitement. “Oh! How about like, how many aliens are really on Earth, and what do they look like, and what do they eat, and do they breathe our air, or are they in, like, bubbles when they’re here, and...?” She finally noticed me smiling at her. She leaped into my lap and peppered my face with kisses. “Thank you, thank you, Alex! This will be great! Wait until you see how good I am!”

I got a hand in her hair so I could hold her head steady, then gave her a proper kiss. “I already know how good you are, Lani.” It was good to see her old personality coming back.

She sat back on my thighs and stared at me for a second, then she reached down and pulled her shirt up over her head. She hadn’t worn a bra, and her firm, tan, teenage tits were suddenly right in front of me. Before I could take advantage of that fact, though, she was reaching for my shirt, trying to tug it up and off.

She turned toward the door to the kitchen. “I need some help in here,” she yelled. She had my shirt off, and got up off my lap to tug down her tight shorts.

Jill came in, dressed in pink sweats. Once she’d been freed from control, I’d been pleased to learn that the cute young blonde had a degree in engineering, and was working on her masters. Getting the job as Todd’s assistant had been her way of getting a foot in the door to one of the best tech companies in the world. But when she wasn’t working, she still looked fabulous, and was utterly devoted to me.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“Alex is being awesome, and I want to say thank you,” Lani said. She dropped to her knees and tugged at my foot, trying to get my shoe off.

Jill laughed and stripped off her sweatshirt, then jumped onto the couch, right into my waiting arms.

Orange Building had a certain buzz to it lately, as all of my worker bees went about their business.

I’d just come from the security office, where Atu had lined up the latest batch of new recruits. I had a working group of four researchers picking all of my new employees. Every afternoon during my meeting with Param, we discussed staffing levels in our projects, personnel needed for upcoming projects, and any security concerns that might come up. We developed a list of job skills and hours needed, which I then turned over to the “Recruiting Office.”

They combed through employee records, and job applications to find the right fits, then Atu ran security checks on the selections, looking for any family or personal situations that might bring the attention of an Arbiter. Once they’d been screened, they were summoned to the security office that next morning, and I brought them into the fold. My recruitment commands were getting so well-worn from repetition, that it was almost like chanting a Buddhist mantra to start my day.

I was amazed at the pyramid of people that I now sat atop. It was all very structured because...well, because it needed to be very structured. Mind controlled people don’t work well in a free-form environment. Even though I liked the precision of the system, I sometimes missed the chaos of the old days. There was no innovation happening right now, no people following their own path. Setting out on a mission of discovery simply didn’t exist. As a result, I needed to constantly steer the ship.

I spent most of my day monitoring progress reports from the project groups, then going to each group, in person, to change their behavior so that it fit the new goal. When I had worked on the nanochip here years ago, my routine had been to set up the test bench with my best calculation of what would work, hit the switch, and then monitor the result. Now I was doing almost the exact same thing, but with thousands of machine-like people.

My real fear, was that the aliens would find out about Orange Building, and do something drastic. I didn’t know if that meant sending in the Arbiter to reprogram everyone, or if they’d just turn loose the Sentinel to eliminate the threat. That was one of the reasons that I’d moved myself and the girls away from campus. No one at R-C knew where we lived now. I’d set up a complex—OK, really it was a paranoid—system of multiple cars in various underground garages throughout the city, so that we could get from here to home without being followed.

I looked for Param in his office, but he wasn’t there. I found him with Kara, at a terminal in the lab. Another, older man was sitting with them. The young former Arbiter was a goldmine of information about the aliens. She’d been giving the research team as much data as she could on their language.

The older man was Dr. Walsh, Chair of Linguistics at Berkeley, who was creating a lexicon of Chrxjthal words. In another section, a couple of the best cyber-cryptographers in Silicon Valley were using the new language to attack the control signals in the aliens’ media broadcasts, seeing if they could find the underlying pattern.

This was probably the most important of all the projects we had in the works, but I had to constantly remind Kara not to push herself too hard. The high doses of dopamine and oxytocin—the pleasure drugs of the brain—that she needed just to feel normal, could have some drastic effects on her if she got too tired or stressed.

Still, the young former barista was thriving in her new position. She looked a lot better as well. She’d filled out even more in the last two weeks, thanks in equal parts to Dr. Li’s care, and Lani’s cooking. She smiled at me as I walked up.

“Hey, Ray,” she said, then giggled at her own joke. She thought it was funny to call me el rey, or king, because it got such a rise out of me. I wasn’t the king of anything as far as I was concerned, but Kara kept pointing out that I was the closest thing to a king that this planet had seen in hundreds of years. All of my subjects did my bidding without question, and I didn’t answer to any authority but myself. Technically, I guess she was right, but somehow being called king, or president, or leader, or whatever, just rubbed me the wrong way. Which was why it was a perfect way for Kara to tease me.

She broke away from the group to come give me a hug. She was a tiny girl, her head barely coming up to my chin. “Hello Carolina,” I said. It was my way of teasing her back. Just like Lani, she hated the longer form of her name, claiming that only her mother ever used it. “How’s the project coming?”

“Slow, but it’s coming.”

“And how are you?” I said.

She looked up at me and arched one eyebrow. “Oh. I see how it is. You only ask about me after you find out that your precious project is OK?”

I was floundering for words, when her smile told me she was teasing me again. That was a real difference between Kara and the other women. While the four that I’d freed from control could think normally, their devotion to me never led to any serious attitude or backtalk. They could speak their mind on almost everything, and teased in a playful way, but they still weren’t as normal as Kara.

Of course Kara had paid a heavy price for her level of freedom, almost starving to death under that blue alien fishbowl, and having her brain constantly bombarded with pleasure signals as a means of control. The fact that she’d bounced back enough to tease me was a minor miracle. Thankfully, once we knew about the pleasure triggers in her thinking, Dr. Li, and the researchers at the Stanford Neuroscience Center had come up with the correct regimen of brain chemicals that she needed to balance her mind.

Another miracle was the way that the alien transformation had changed her brain, allowing her to sense thoughts and emotions of the people around her. We were keeping that fact a tight secret for now, as it allowed us to monitor Anatoly without him knowing.

“Progress report, Param,” I called over Kara’s head.

My chief drone and former friend turned to face me. “Progress is within projections, Alex.”

I sighed. In the land of the mind-controlled, you ask a simple question, you get a simple answer. I didn’t order him to elaborate though—I’d get it from his reports this afternoon.

“Oh,” I said, looking down at Kara, “you’ll get to see more of Lani now. I set her up in an office on the third floor. She’s going to be working on a new project for me, and she’ll need a lot of input from you...about your experiences with the Chrxjthal.”

Kara squeezed me tighter, then finally let go. “That’s awesome. We’ll get to hang out at lunch now.” Among all the girls, Kara had the tightest bond with Lani. Probably because they were both young, normal girls, not scientists or engineers. That, and the fact that Lani reminded Kara of her dead girlfriend.

I was about to move on to my next stop, when Kara touched me lightly on the arm. “Alex,” she said quietly, “can I talk to you for a minute?” She looked around at the crowded lab. “Alone,” she said. She bit her bottom lip, obviously nervous about something.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go to my office.”

“Can we go to your old apartment instead?” she asked, already heading for the stairs.

I shrugged and followed her.

Once we were inside our former residence, she closed and locked the door. She put her back to it like she expected someone to knock it down.

“What’s the matter, Kara? What’s wrong? Is it Anatoly?” My fists clenched.

She looked confused, then aware, then embarrassed. “¡Dios mio! Oh, I’m so sorry, Alex. No, it’s nothing like that. It’s more...personal.” She looked down at her toes, then back up at me.

I blushed with embarrassment, then took a deep breath. “OK. Well, then, Kara, have a seat and let’s talk about it.” I waved her into the living room, then sat down in a stuffed armchair.

She sat opposite me, in a twin of my chair, her toes barely touching the floor. Her back was straight and her hands were folded in her lap. She stared off into space for a moment, then exhaled and looked me in the eye.

“We need to have sex,” she said.

I almost laughed—almost—at the earnestness in her voice when she said that. Ever since the day that I came back with Jill and Scarlett, she’d been hanging around my little group, often while one or more us was having sex. I’d seen her play with herself during these sessions, but she’d never joined in. As one of the Unconverted, she had her pick of millions of women, and men. I wondered why she wanted me?

“We? Like, you and me? Are you sure? Wouldn’t you want to be with Lani, or one of the other girls?”

She bit her lip. “No. It’s you, Alex. It has to be you. Don’t ask me why.” She scuffed her toes against the carpet. “Actually I know why. Or part of it. Or...I’m really confused, but trust me, this is what I want.”

From the blush that was creeping into her face, and the way she twisted her hands together, I wasn’t so sure. “Relax, Kara,” I said. I stood up and moved to the plush white couch along the back wall. “Come here and sit with me, and we’ll talk about it.”

I sat in one corner, and then held out my arm to the tiny woman. She approached me nervously, but climbed onto the couch and curled up in the crook of my arm, in the same position that Lani had been in last night. It seemed to be a favorite among the women I know, which is why I suggested it. She rubbed her face on my chest, almost like a cat, then curled up and closed her eyes.

“Mmmm. This is nice,” she said. Her arm crept around my waist and she squeezed me.

I caressed her hair, and she pressed back into my touch. “So. Why me?” I said.

“Well...it’s complicated,” she said. “You know, it’s a shame that there aren’t any unconverted therapists around, because I’d like to figure it out myself. I tried talking to a converted psychiatrist at the Neuroscience Canter, but I guess you need original thoughts to figure out what’s going on in someones head. She had no idea how to help me.”

“I’m finding that with a lot of people. It’s sad how much we’ve lost. I think I miss artists the most,” I said.

“Mmmm. Musicians for me. Both of my parents played music. I’m sure they still can, but not...the same. If you know what I mean?”

“Yup.” I moved my hand from her head to her shoulder, letting her feel the weight of my arm around her.

She laughed softly. “Of course you do. That’s one of the reasons I love you.”

I must have tensed up when she said that, because she picked her head up to look at me. “Oh, didn’t I tell you that? Hmmm.” She smiled and put her head on my chest again. “I’ll explain that later, maybe. Anyway, even before the Chrxjthal landed, I was pretty messed up. Probably from what my uncle did to me when I was twelve.” I must have tensed up again, because she patted my hand.

“I know, you’re shocked. And yeah, it fucked up my head, and yeah, it’s maybe half of the reason why I sleep with girls. I hated men for a long time. Couldn’t bear to be around them. But then the aliens gave me something.” She looked up at me. “They let me see people for real. You can’t hide from me, Alex. I mean, I can’t read your thoughts, but I know you better than I ever knew Sarai.”

I knew what she’d told us about her ability to sense emotion in people. It was strongest with the Converted, because her alien boss had changed her to read their minds, with the help of her helmet. Once it was removed, she could still catch flashes from the Converted, and sense the emotions of the Unconverted. It worked better on my four Freed girls than on me, but I guess it worked well enough to lead to this talk.

“I’m not sure you know me as well as you think, Kara,” I said. “I’m usually not a pleasant guy. Ask Param, he’ll tell you with brutal, mind-controlled honesty how I was before the invasion.” I would have told her to ask Scarlett, who probably knew me better than Param, but the process of freeing my former assistant made her a little biased where I was concerned.

She smiled. “I did,” she said. I raised my eyebrows. “He said you were driven, and dedicated, and the best person he’d ever worked for. That you could be prickly at times, but only when people were making dumb mistakes. And he also told me how all of the women who worked here used to have crushes on you—that he used to hear it all the time in the lunchroom—but that you were too clueless to do anything about it.”

I could feel myself blushing. “OK,” I said, “that’s great. But why does that mean that we need to have sex?”

She got up on the couch and swung her leg over me, sitting down on my lap, just like Lani had last night. It was getting a little surreal. She looped her arms around my neck. She still weighed next to nothing, even after two weeks of a high calorie, high protein diet. The hole in her forehead had left a scar, which she’d covered by cutting her hair to have bangs. Her brown eyes stared into mine from under that fringe now.

“Because, zoquete, I need you to,” she said. “There’s a ton of reasons, but lets start off with that it will help me think better. My new mind is a complicated beast. I need to see what it can do, and what I can do to it, to give us the best results in this war.”

It was funny hearing Lani, and now Kara, talking about the war, and about doing their part. I guess I didn’t realize how much they had to lose as well. Why should I be the only one trying to beat the aliens?

“Hmm,” Kara said, ‘you just felt doubt about something. It wasn’t me was it?”

That startled me. She’d told us over and over what she could do, but that’s the first time she’d ever worked her mind trick in front of me.

“Sorry,” she said. “I can feel how that upset you.”

“No,” I said. I put my hands on her tiny waist. “Not upset. Just surprised. You’re pretty amazing with that talent.”

She smiled, and before I could stop her, planted a firm kiss on my lips. “See?” she said. “That’s the kind of thing that gets me turned on.”

She squirmed in my lap, and the pressure she put on my cock was having an effect.

“Now you’re worried about something. Look Alex, I’m not going to get hurt. I’ve seen you, I’ve seen your body, and I’ve seen your...you know. It’s a really nice one, by the way, but I’ve had toys that were bigger.” I raised my eyebrows, and she giggled.

“I guess when it comes down to it, you just have to trust me. I’ve thought a lot about it.” She grabbed the hem of her shirt, and lifted it up over her head. She hesitated as she reached for the clasp of her pink bra. She cocked her head, and I knew she was “listening” to what I was feeling. Right now, it was equal parts puzzlement, curiosity, and excitement. She shrugged her bra off, and thrust her chest out, showing me her small, round tits. My cock gave a little jump in my pants, and she ground against it some more.

She reached up to cup one of her breasts. “Do you like them?” she asked. “Dr. Li found a specialist to pump them back up.”

I knew the story. Her extreme starvation had eaten away most of the fatty tissue in her body, including her breasts, leaving them like sagging pancakes on her chest. Even though she was eating again, she would have never regained the youthful firmness she had before; not without help. Amber had suggested it actually, after seeing Kara naked. I’d worried about subjecting her to cosmetic procedures so soon, but Amber, having the largest breasts among all of the women in the house, was very in touch with boobs and their psychology. She’d convinced me to order Dr. Li to fix the problem.

Kara was looking at me again—that same expression like she was listening. Her mouth opened in surprise.

“It was you!” she said, cupping both her breasts. “You got him to give me my tits back.”

I grimaced like I’d been caught. I could feel my face flush. “It was—”

“Thank you!” she said, throwing her arms around my neck, and pushing her firm tits in my face. “I was so worried that I was going to be...deformed.”

I was getting worried about how easily Kara could get into my head. I didn’t have a lot of secrets, but I was generally a private person. I didn’t know if I was ready for someone to “hear” everything I was feeling. Among this group of women, half of what I felt was sexual, and that could get embarrassing.

Kara didn’t give any clue that she felt my trepidation, so either she was distracted from rubbing her tits on my face, or she decided to keep her revelations to herself. Either way, it made it easier for me to pretend that she couldn’t read my emotions. I went back to concentrating on the small Latina in my lap trying to shove her nipple between my lips.

I gave the proffered brown bud a quick peck, but then moved to capture her full lips with mine. She moaned into my mouth as I sent my tongue searching for hers. Her hand came up and rubbed my stubbled cheek, reminding me that I hadn’t shaved this morning, and that my current partner wasn’t used to kissing scratchy men. I ran my hands down her smooth back, and onto her denim covered ass. Even though she had filled out quite a bit, her butt was still tiny, and I felt her pelvic bones when I squeezed her cheeks. She must have liked the sensation, because she ground her crotch on my growing erection as she circled her hips in my hands.

After last night’s couch adventure with Lani and Jill, I thought this situation with Kara needed a more traditional, flatter, surface to continue. I gripped her tight cheeks and levered to my feet. Kara wrapped my waist with her legs, and leaned back to look at me as I carried her toward one of the bedrooms.

“I remember you carrying me once before,” she said. “It must be nice to be so strong.”

She remembered the day that I found her in Todd’s office? I thought she’d been unconscious that whole time.

I laid her on the wide bed. She reached for the button on her jeans.

“Get naked,” she said.

I chuckled and stripped down. I watched her as she undressed, seeing that her arms and legs had more tone, and while her ribs and her stomach muscles were still obvious through her smooth skin, she wasn’t the living skeleton she’d been before.

She spread her legs in front of me, showing her shaved pink pussy. She ran a finger between her lips, then moved up to rub her clit while she watched me drop my pants.

I pulled my boxers down. And her eyes got wide as my hard cock sprang out.

“Mmmm, is that because of me?”

“I don’t see another beautiful, naked girl anywhere, do you?” I said.

She sat up and held out her arms. “Come here.”

I joined her on the bed. She knelt beside me, reaching out to wrap her small hand around my hardness. Her touch was light, and tentative, so I covered her hand with mine, and showed her how to squeeze and rub me the way I liked. Her eyes darted between my face, and the head of my cock as it burst in and out of the circle of our hands. She used her other hand to explore, running across my stomach, up and down my thighs, and up between my legs to weigh my heavy balls.

A flush spread through her skin, and her breathing got faster, as she saw male anatomy in a new light. A drop of fluid appeared at the end of my dick, and she smeared it over the head. She brought her wet fingers to her nose and inhaled, then stuck out her pink tongue to give them a tentative lick.

I assumed I passed her test, because she lowered her head and ran her tongue over the end of my cock. I moaned at the warm, wet contact, and she pulled back to look at me. I gave her a reassuring smile, and she dipped her head back to my crotch. Her mouth opened wide and she took me inside.

Her sharp teeth grazed my skin and I winced. She pulled back and looked up at me again. I was sure that she was listening to my mind, trying to figure things out by sensing my reactions. When she took me back in her mouth, she kept her teeth away. It was a perfect way for her to learn, because all I had to do was lay back and enjoy.

She got between my legs and bobbed her head over my straining cock. At one point she went too deep and choked, but she didn’t let it stop her. She seemed determined to match what she’d seen the other girls doing, but ended up coughing and gagging after each attempt. Finally, I pulled her up on top of me to give her a kiss, hoping my mind was giving her the correct message that I loved how she tried.

She rubbed her entire body over me, scraping her tits over my bare chest, squirming her hips on top of my trapped dick, and rubbing arms and legs over whatever skin she could find. I held the back of her head to keep her lips locked with mine, and put a hand on her ass to press her harder against my cock.

She slid off to the side, grabbing my arm and tugging, so I rolled with her, ending up on top of her tiny fame. I covered her completely, letting her feel my weight, without crushing her into the mattress. She moaned as I rubbed my erection between the wet lips of her pussy.

I wanted to taste her, and kissed down her neck, onto her chest. She must have known my plan because she tugged me back up.

“Mmmm, we can try that later, Alex. Honestly though, if I needed that kind of sensation, I’d find a woman to help.”

I looked down at her.

“Seriously,” she said, “who knows how to lick a pussy better than someone who owns one?”

“I’ll take that as a challenge...for next time.”

She gave me a kiss, and rubbed her hand over my cheek.

“You’re so scratchy. I’m not sure I want your stubble anywhere near my tender pussy. Besides, I need you for something else right now.”

“Which is?”

She hesitated. “I know you’re generally a nice guy, Alex, especially when I’ve seen you doing...you know...with the girls, but I need something different from you. I need you to take me, to claim me. Use me, make me do everything you can think of, and then I need you to make me cum. Like, the most mind-blowing orgasm you’ve ever given a woman.”

I must have had my mouth open in surprise, or else she was reading my emotions, because she got very flushed, and looked away. She was a determined woman though, as I was finding out. She took a deep breath, and looked back at me.

“I swear, this is for a reason. I’m scared as hell, but I need you to do this for me. It will make things so much better for all of us.” She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me down to kiss her. “Please, Alex?”

I thought about it for a second. “OK,” I said, “I’ll trust you. But you have to tell me if it goes too far. Seriously, I’d feel terrible if I hurt you.”

She beamed up at me. “I promise,” she said.

Without another word, I took her hands, and pinned them above her head. It was easy to hold both of her thin wrists in just one hand. I cupped her chin with the other hand and kissed her hard, thrusting my tongue deep into her open mouth. She inhaled sharply through her nose, then moaned into my mouth.

It was an odd request, what she wanted. I’m not a consciously dominant guy with women. Sometimes it works out that way, as I push a boundary here or there, and find out that she likes me to push. I’ll keep going, up to what I’d call an equilibrium point, where what she wants done to her, and what I’m comfortable doing, all balance out. It was going to be tricky finding that balance, with a woman who had no idea of how far a man could go.

There was no use overthinking it. I’d promised Kara that I’d do this for her, and for whatever reason, she seemed convinced it was for the best, so I disconnected my logic process, and let my primitive brain take over.

I moved off from her, exposing her naked body to my wandering hand. I squeezed her small tis, and pinched her hard little nipples until she gasped into my mouth. My hand wandered further down her body, while I kissed her soft neck. She spread her legs wide as I pressed down on her bare pussy, and cried out as I drove a finger into her wet hole. I moved down to suck her brown nipples, while I fucked her with one, then two stiff fingers. She moaned, and her arms tensed in my grip.

This was nice, but the way she’d described it, she wanted something more. I turned her over and pressed her face into the bed. My hand went back between her thighs, and this time I drove three thick fingers into her from behind. She screamed into the covers, and lifted her hips to meet my hand. I kept her pinned with a hand on her neck, as I thrust into her soaked channel.

My cock was straining. I heard Kara’s cries into the bedspread getting higher and louder. Her hands were clutching at handfuls of fabric. I knew I could get her to cum if I kept going, but that’s not what she’d asked for.

I pulled my hand back. She pushed her ass off the bed, searching for my thrusting fingers, but instead, I gave her narrow butt cheek a hard smack. She yelped and squirmed on the bed. I gave her other cheek a spank. I moved between her open legs, and tugged up on her hips, getting her to her knees in front of me.

She watched over her shoulder, eyes bright, face flushed, as I nestled the hard tip of my cock between her wet lips.

“Do it, Alex,” she said.

I pressed forward, entering her tight channel. I pushed slowly but relentlessly, not stopping until I was as deep as I could go. She moaned constantly as I split the inner walls of her pussy. Her head sagged limply between her arms. I held myself inside her, letting her get used to the feeling. When she flexed her inner muscles around my shaft, I knew she was ready.

I pulled back, and drove in hard, slapping my hips against her bony ass. She yelped, as she felt my cock bursting into her. I held her narrow waist and pulled her back onto me, starting a constant barrage of hard thrusts. I pushed her head down to the bed, leaving her ass high in the air. She pinched her nipple, and groaned as she absorbed each piercing drive.

I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, enjoying the feeling of her soft, warm pussy around me. I liked this more than I thought I would. It was primal, and powerful, and it felt fantastic driving hard into this tiny, submissive woman. A thought tickled the back of my mind, that maybe Kara was doing this? Making me take her so roughly? Her mind was different after wearing the Arbiter’s helmet, but could she actually control other people? No. The aliens wouldn’t give that much power to an underling. The feeling I had must be from my own subconscious.

Wherever it was from, it felt fantastic. I dug my fingers harder into her hips, and pulled her back on my cock with even more force.

I raised my hand, and gave her ass another hard smack. She cried out, then buried her face in the blankets. I ran my hand over her reddened cheek, and then down into the crack of her skinny ass. She jumped like she’d been shocked when I pressed a blunt finger against the crinkle of her asshole. I trailed my fingers down between us, coating them in her running juices, then back up to press my fingertip firmly into her tight hole. She screamed into the blankets as my finger sank in to the knuckle, spreading her protesting muscles.

I twisted my finger in her ass, as I kept pumping hard into her pussy. She gripped at me with both holes, rhythmically working the muscles to squeeze my finger and my swollen cock. I felt a tingle building in my balls that told me I would cum soon if I kept this up.

I pulled my finger from her ass, and Kara moaned with disappointment. When I pulled my wet cock from her, she picked up her head and looked at me. I’m sure she was going to ask me to put it back, but I had a different idea.

I interrupted whatever protest she was going to voice when I rolled her onto her back, and got her ankles on my shoulders. I took one of her slender wrists in each hand, and pinned her arms to the bed. As I leaned forward, her knees bent back until they pressed into her soft breasts. I had her folded up in a neat little package, unable to move, as the tip of my cock searched for her entrance. With a few probing thrusts, I found my target, and slammed back inside her.

“Oh, god yes,” she gasped out.

I felt her arms and legs straining against me, trying to move, but I held her tight. She stopped trying, and her head fell back to the bed. She stared up at me as I loomed over her, pounding her into the mattress with every stroke. I stared back, challenging her to escape. She was mine. We locked eyes, and got lost in our own feedback loop. Her breathing got faster, and so did mine. Her skin flushed and her chest glistened with sweat, the same as mine. I could only imagine that the same knot of tension was building up inside her, matching me as I built toward a climax.

I felt it in her first, as her arms and legs trembled, and her mouth opened in a silent, panting scream. The pressure at the base of my cock was building, as her channel got even tighter. The slick, wet sounds of my cock pistoning in and out of her filled the small room, and the smell of sex surrounded us.

Finally, on one hard thrust, Kara’s entire body went rigid, and the cry she’d been trying to get out, suddenly escaped. Her walls clamped down on me, and I exploded, driving deep and spraying cum into the accepting well of her pussy. I held still as each rhythmic pump of my cock unloaded more cream inside her. Her trapped body shook under me, and spasms ran through her taut belly with each wave of sensation.

She’d stared at me through her entire climax, but as the tremors ebbed, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back. She let out a satisfied sigh, and her body relaxed in my grip.

I loosened my hold on her arms, seeing red marks where I’d squeezed her tight. Her legs slid off my shoulders, but she wrapped them around my waist, keeping me from pulling back. I leaned down to kiss her, and she held my head to press her lips tightly to mine. She finally pulled back and grinned up at me.

“Not bad for a man,” she said.

I chuckled at her, then tried to pry myself free from her grip. She groaned as I pulled her legs away from me, and eased my shrinking cock from her abused hole. I laid down beside her, getting my arm under her head. I brushed a lock of sweaty hair back from her cheek.

“I hope that wasn’t too much,” I said.

“Mmmm-mmmm,” she hummed. “Nope, that was perfect. You’re actually pretty good at this stuff.”

“That wasn’t really me. I mean, it was, but it’s not what I’m like all the time. I mean I was trying to...” I had no idea why I was fumbling with my words; it was so unlike me.

“It’s OK, Alex,” she said. “Like I told you, I needed you to take me, totally. My old master’s presence was still so strong in my mind, I couldn’t think. Now I’m totally clear. Now you’re the master in my head.”

“Kara, I—”

“Oh, no, it’s fine, Alex. I don’t mean master like, Master. I’m not a drone suddenly. But you have to understand what it was like, to have a voice in your head, whispering to you, making you do things, and then rewarding you with the most extreme pleasure you’d ever felt. You don’t just get rid of that presence when the helmet gets ripped off.”

“But the two of us, we’re linked, Alex. Probably from the first time you found me. I’d lost the power of the helmet, and you were the first mind that I felt without it. Even while I was unconscious, I think I was building a connection with you. And then of course there’s the fact that you saved my life. That tends to make you stand out in my mind.”

She rolled onto her side, and I watched a stream of white goo leak down her thigh and onto the bed. I guess me noticing caused her to notice too, because she glanced down, then back up a me. With a smile on her face, she rubbed my leaking cum into her skin.

“I think that the way my mind was twisted to make me an Arbiter, made it necessary to have someone in charge of my brain. I need to feel that presence in the back of my mind that says someone is watching over me. Since my alien controller left me to die, he doesn’t really fit the bill anymore. Now, it’s you.”

I touched her cheek, and she rubbed against my hand like a cat. “I wish you’d told me all this before Kara, we could have...” We could have what? She seemed to know what she needed, and she’d taken it, sort of. I didn’t know how I felt about being the “master of her mind” or whatever she called it, but I was doing a lot of things in the present that I wouldn’t have considered in the past.

Her eyes were drooping. She’d used a lot of energy, and it must have worn out her recovering body. I spooned behind her, laying my arm protectively across her body. She sighed and snuggled in close.

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens in a couple weeks,” she said.

I had no idea what she was talking about, so I stayed quiet.

She held up her hand, and I saw her fingers had a pearly white sheen on them. “I’ve never taken birth control,” she said. “Never needed to with my, um, preferences.”

After dropping that bombshell statement, she curled up in a ball, and fell asleep.

I was just starting to process what she’d said, when there was a loud knock, and Lani poked her head in the door.

“Hey, guys,” she said. She saw Kara lift her head. “How was he?”

Kara stretched her tiny body. “Mmmm. He was good,”—she looked over at me—”but I was better.” She grinned and closed her eyes, rubbing her hand over her tight belly.

Lani smiled. “Alex, Anatoly called,” she said. “He wants to talk.”

It was crowded in the R-C van. We’d added a ton of equipment, to go with the eight passengers. Even parked like we were, it was hard to see all of the critical vids past other people’s heads. We were in an alley, just off one of the main roads in east Oakland.

Normally, I would have expected a large homeless population in this part of the city, but Kara had informed us that most of the homeless in the Bay Area had eventually succumbed to starvation or dehydration—their normal behavior wasn’t exactly life-sustaining. Six of us were watching the row of vids installed on the side and back walls of the van. Mike and Eddie watched through the windows for any security issues. At the head of the alley, two more of Anatoly’s drone guards patrolled on foot, next to their own car. He hadn’t told me their names yet.

Param turned from one of the displays. “All of the vid recorders are up and transmitting. Sensor array is within our expected range.”

Anatoly checked a time display. “The subject will arrive home in under a minute.”

Lani squeezed my hand, and Kara gave me a quick smile from the other row of seats. Dr. Kinslov’s assistant, a hulking Nordic man named Stephan, brought up a split view on the main panel. One part showed the outside of a well maintained bungalow, about half a kilometer from us in the Oakland hills. The other view showed a tall, middle-aged woman, puttering around in a small kitchen. She was dressed casually, in slacks and a lavender sweater, and her hair was up in a bun.

She’d just taken a roasting pan out of the oven, and set it on the stovetop, when a charcoal Toyota sedan pulled into the driveway. We watched the other view, as a grey-haired, pudgy man in a blue suit got out of the car and walked to the front door, briefcase in one hand, a bouquet of flowers in the other.

Stephan shrunk the exterior view and enlarged the inside of the house.

“Hello, dear,” the grey-haired man said, as he walked into the kitchen.

His wife wiped her hands on her apron. “Hello, dear.”

He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and handed her the flowers. She smiled and held them to her nose.

“How lovely,” she said. “Thank you, honey.”

He set his briefcase on the counter, and took off his suit jacket, hanging it over the back of a chair. He sat at the kitchen table, as his wife put the flowers in a vase. She walked over to place the flowers on the table.

“How was your day, dear?” she asked.

“I completed my normal behavior without incident,” he said.

She smiled at him. “That’s wonderful. Dinner is almost ready. I made your favorite, pot roast.”

“My normal behavior is to not like pot roast,” he said.

Anatoly chuckled from the other side of the van. “Here we go,” he said.

“What did you do, Anatoly?” I said.

The bearded Russian turned to me. “I modified his behavior at his work. He now hates the very meal that he’s eaten every Wednesday for the last twenty years.”

Lani gasped, and squeezed my hand. “That’s awful,” she whispered in my ear.

“I needed an innocent party to have a conflict worthy of summoning an Arbiter.” He turned back to the vid. “Just watch,” he said.

“...always cook pot roast on Wednesdays,” the wife said.

“And my normal behavior is to never eat pot roast,” the husband said.

“But my normal behavior says that your normal behavior is to love pot roast,” she said.

The husband was quiet for a moment. “Is this a conflict?”

The wife processed for a couple seconds. “I think this is a conflict,” she said.

The man already had his satphone in his hand.

“Stephan, capture that call,” Anatoly ordered. “Param, try to trace the number. I haven’t had much success before this, but we can try.”

I turned to Kara. “Where do the calls go to? Did you ever answer the phone?”

She shook her head. “I’d just get a tingle in my brain. A jolt of pleasure to wake me up, and get me ready to leave. I never heard the call, or knew the problem, or the location. Mateo drove us everywhere.”

“The Arbiter will be here in a short while, Judith,” the man on the vid said.

Judith nodded, and stood silently in place.

“I couldn’t trace the call,” Param said. “Once it hit the scram/descram, it routed through a non-standard pipeline.”

Anatoly waved it off. “I didn’t expect any different,” he said. He went back to studying a display.

“So,” I said into the silence, “what’s your plan, Anatoly? All you said is that we were gathering intel on the aliens.”

He swiveled in his seat to face us. “I have caused an Arbiter and Sentinel to be summoned to a location that I...that we control. The interior and exterior of the house are littered with sensors so that we can record everything about these alien servants.” He pointed at Kara. “I wanted Ms. Alvarez here to provide insight into the procedures that we are about to witness.”

He looked at Lani, but didn’t say anything. That was fine. I was the one who had invited her, to help her with her research. Let Anatoly believe I brought her as a pet.

Stephan flipped through all of the vid feeds to test the angles. There were sixteen cameras set up throughout the house and grounds. I watched Param timesync groups of sensors, zeroing them against their background levels.

While they continued testing, I sat on one of the bench seats and watched. Lani was in the seat next to me, gripping my hand tight. Kara was in the next row, looking over Stephan’s shoulder. She looked tense, but focused. Without turning, she held out a hand toward me. Ever since our encounter, she seemed to know when I was thinking about her. I took her small hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

We sat silently for about fifteen minutes, until Stephan turned around.

“They’re approaching, from the west,” he said.

The tension in the van rose several notches. I kept catching Anatoly sneaking looks under his bushy eyebrows at Kara. His face was hard to read under the thick beard, but I was glad that I’d brought my Glock with me.

Everyone’s eyes were glued to the large vid, as the same Mercedes as before pulled to the curb in front of the couple’s house. I realized that Anatoly never told me the homeowners’ names.

The hulking form of the Sentinel—former Army sergeant Mateo Colon—got out of the driver’s seat. The Arbiter was already on the curb waiting for him. He put his rifle to his shoulder, and moved up the walk to the front door.

“How does the Arbiter see?” I asked Kara.

“Um, I’m not sure if it was a vid in front of my eyes, or a direct feed into my brain. I know that it’s enhanced. I could see heat around objects. I saw these auras too, that didn’t have to do with heat, but more like...I don’t know...mood, maybe? I never learned what it was for.” She watched the new Arbiter follow Mateo to the front door. “I could see fine though. Never tripped even with that bowl on my head.”

I looked at Kara’s replacement. It had been twenty-five days since she’d been drafted into the alien cause. Her legs, in her knee-length business skirt, looked very thin, and the back of the skirt, where her substantial ass had once filled out the fabric, was now sunken and loose. She didn’t look on the verge of collapse yet, but she was feeling the effects of her starvation.

Kara’s eyes were glued to the screen. Mateo, his gun at the ready, opened the front door of the house. He turned right from the entry, and moved into the living room, where another camera picked him up, entering, scanning, and moving on through the house. The Arbiter entered the room.

“I should be able to feel them now,” Kara said. “Usually this close, I can feel their minds. My former master is listening through me. It’s routine at this point, no need for him to do anything. I need to greet the—”

“Greetings Harmonious Brother, Harmonious Sister,” the Arbiter said through the van’s speakers.

“Greetings Arbiter,” the couple said in unison.

“Their minds are opening to me now. I can scan their thoughts, and determine the root of the conflict. The voice in my head will tell me if I need to look for something specific, some detail he needs for his decision. I’ll usually ask them to state their problem, to observe them as they speak. There’s no need to listen to their actual words. I just—”

The Sentinel burst into the room, ripping off a piece of the door frame in his haste. He didn’t make a sound; he simply raised his gun, and shot both husband and wife with a single bullet through the head. Blood and brain matter splattered onto the Arbiter, who didn’t move.

Lani screamed, and buried her face in my chest. I found myself reaching for my gun, even though this was happening a half kilometer away. Kara’s eyes were wide.

“He knows!” she said. “He knows you tampered with their minds.”

The blood-soaked Arbiter turned slowly in place, until she faced the hidden vid recorder. She pointed directly at the lens, and a second later, the picture went blank. Other sensors picked up the sound of the Sentinel’s rifle.

“She’s tracking the electronics with her helmet’s sensors,” Kara said. “They’ll backtrace your signal if you give them enough time.”

Anatoly looked past me. “Michael, Edward,” he said, “begin our exfil.”

Both men jumped out of the van. Mike spoke into his radio, warning the two at the head of the alley. I put my hand on my holstered gun, even though there was nothing to shoot. Kara watched as the Arbiter tracked down every sensor, and every camera in the house, and the Sentinel calmly destroyed them.

“Keep recording as long as possible,” Anatoly said to Param and Stephan.

When the last interior camera was destroyed, Kara looked over at me. “He’ll have the backtrace any second,” she said.

“Anatoly!” I said. “We need to leave, now!”

The bearded Russian was calm. Maybe he trusted his armed minions to defeat the walking, breathing alien weapon that was on its way here? I was ready to jump into the driver’s seat and take off for a deep, dark, hiding place.

“It’s all right, Alex. This was part of the plan.”

I stared at him, as he started unplugging equipment. Part of the plan? Getting a converted couple killed by a Sentinel, and us hunted by their mysterious alien master?

“What kind of plan, Anatoly?”

He must have heard the frost in my voice, because he stopped what he was doing, and turned to face me. He held up a placating hand when he noticed my grip on the pistol.

“Alex, stay calm,” he said. “I’m sorry for the death of that couple, but it was always a possibility when dealing with the Sentinel. I tried everything to make my changes to Mr. Collins undetectable.”

So, his last name was Collins. I still didn’t know his first name. And he was dead. Because of us.

“Look, Alex, we need to take care of the immediate situation first, and then we can discuss this tragic event.”

As he spoke, I noticed Stephan turning toward me. His fists were clenched, and his jaw was tense. I knew in that moment he was another of Anatoly’s deadly bodyguards. I was trying to remember my training in quick draw, when Kara got out of her seat and moved between us.

“We need to leave, now!” she shouted. “They’re coming!”

Somehow, her intensity broke the tension in the van. Anatoly turned to finish unplugging everything from a grey box. In that moment, the Chevy sedan driven by the other two guards pulled up to the van, the headlights casting odd shadows through the cabin. The side of the van opened, and Mike leaned in. Anatoly stepped back from the grey box, and Mike hauled it outside.

On the pavement outside the van was a metal crate with an open lid. Mike threw the grey box into the crate, Eddie slammed the lid shut, and the other two guys picked it up and put it in the trunk of their car.

Anatoly was talking to Stephan, as Mike and Eddie piled back into the front of the van. I still had my hand on my gun as I eased a shocked Lani into the seat.

“Did they hit the marks?” Anatoly asked his assistant.

I didn’t hear the answer, because the van accelerated down the alley, following the Chevy. I grabbed Kara’s arm to keep her from falling. She sat down in the row of seats behind me, and leaned forward to hug me.

“Be careful, Alex,” she whispered in my ear. “He’s almost ready to order his guys to kill you.”

My mind was swirling, and I took a deep breath to get it under control. I was in a bad situation, locked in a speeding metal box with a psychopathic scientist, and his three deadly minions. At least two of them were armed, but all of them had no problem with conflict. I had two unarmed women and a converted man to protect with my one gun, and I was surrounded.

I decided to defuse the situation as best I could. I would have to deal with Anatoly eventually, but now wasn’t the time.

“What’s the escape plan, Anatoly?” I asked. I used my most conversational voice, trying not to trigger him.

I guess it worked for now. “Nathaniel and Jarrod are taking our transceiver on a ride down to the bay. That box is lined with thermite, and they will trigger the charge and throw it in the water. That was our only source of electronic emissions, so once it is destroyed, there will be nothing for the aliens to track.”

He moved up into the row behind me, taking the seat next to Kara, who cringed back from him. I turned to face him, and saw he was excited about something.

“We’ll be safe, Alex,” he said. “Michael knows how to hide us. The important part though, is that the plan worked.” He gripped my shoulder like a vice. “It worked!”

Through the front window, I saw the Chevy turn right, toward the bay, while our van slowed to the posted speed limit. I spun to face Anatoly.

His eyes were shining as he shook my shoulder. “It took a genius like mine to come up with the plan, but now, we’ll be able to find the damned alien, and finally kill it!”

I must have looked skeptical, because he let go of my shoulder and leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms.

“You don’t believe,” he said. “You forget, Alex, that I have no equal in the field of nanorobotics. What I have done is inspired! I created a simple robot, in my lab. It is very small, and has only three functions.” He held up his hand and started ticking off his fingers. “One...it waits for twelve hours. Two...it joins with it’s nearby brothers to form a viscous droplet, that will run off from whatever it is clinging to, and fall to the ground. And three...it vibrates at a frequency in the millimeter range.”

He stared into my face, waiting to see when the realization hit me. As it did, I was torn between horror at his cold-blooded manipulation, and awe at his incredible intellect.

“So how...what was the delivery vector?” I asked. Lani and Kara both gave me strange looks, at the enthusiasm in my voice.

“Dust,” Anatoly said with a smug grin. ”Dust on the street in front of the house, and dust on the floors inside.”

“Alex,” Kara said. “What does that mean, ‘dust?’“

“It means that Dr. Kinslov has created a totally undetectable tracking device. His bots are mixed with dust. They cling to the car, and to the feet of the Arbiter and Sentinel. In a few hours, they form into a droplet and fall to the ground, where they vibrate at a frequency that we can detect, in a bandwidth that’s outside the aliens’ normal signals.”

I couldn’t believe it. In my mind, our revolution was still in the planning stages, but Anatoly had leaped ahead of us, and was already going on the offensive. It was exhilarating to think about, but I wasn’t sure we were ready. I knew one thing for sure though.

“They’re going to know we’re here, Anatoly,” I said. “Are you ready to declare war on the Chrxjthal?”