The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

13.

“Now,” said Sue, looking into Kerry’s eyes. “Let’s just go.”

Kerry nodded. Soon it would be dusk, time for Ritual, and both of them knew their free will might not surface again after another eternity of the drums, and the flickering torches.

The dancing.

The chant . . . ing . . .

Kerry shook her head. “How far is it to that place you saw?” Sue looked at her and frowned. “No—I mean can we make it there in a night, or will we need to bring anything?”

The other girl brightened. It seemed like just being able to talk to Kerry was helping her fight the power of the drug. “Right. I think so. It’s not like the island’s that huge.

“Anyway, I don’t really trust the food either. I always got a light buzz from eating it, and I don’t think that’s just because they’re keeping us on cult-carbohydrates.”

Kerry thought. Thinking was still difficult, and the soothing scent of coconut reminded her of why, but Sue was like a sun burning through the fog over her mind.

“Water’s—hard. They keep it in pails, with dippers. Nothing you can carry. Wonder if that’s to stop . . . escapes . . .” She tried to hold onto that idea, but the image of the buckets drew her helplessly into a soothing memory of watering a row of kneeling, sweating, uncomplaining women working mindlessly on the crops.

Being one. An obedient Tribeswoman.

Working. Obeying. Climaxing.

Obeying . . .

Must . . .

“Hey.”

Day broke over her thoughts, as Sue’s hands tightened on her own. “Stay with me here.”

Kerry blinked and stared intently at her. She started to thank her.

“Never mind, kiddo. I’m starting to get an idea of how hard you have to fight this stuff.” She squeezed harder. “And you were fighting, even without me. So feel good about that.

“Um—water: I scored one of the goons’ little plastic water bottles. About a liter and half, I think.” She paused.

“But what I really love is just . . . the way being Tribe fills my mind. Like being asleep but still able to hear . . . and obey.”

Oh no. She looked with horror into Sue’s wide, suddenly glazing eyes.

Sue’s face hadn’t changed, still beaming enthusiastically, but Kerry’s heart stopped, seeing Sue’s inner fire abruptly expressing that. She wondered miserably if there’d been some trigger she wasn’t programmed for.

“Hear and obey,” Sue repeated in a dazed, almost musical voice.

Sue still gripped her hands.

Kerry looked back at her, too shocked to cry, and wondered why her own mind held her back from agreeing, from echoing her praise of Tribe and plunging in for the last time.

Into total obedience.

“Tribe is all,” she managed, hoping her hopelessness sounded enough like drugged certainty.

“Excellent,” said a new voice.

From behind her, someone stepped to look at them together. Not a Priestess—Kerry suspected the see-and-be-hypnotized-with-a-glance programming would still work and would have sent her into trance by now. It was another senior slave like Warmth. Like Liz.

“You will learn Tribe from each other,” the woman said approvingly, and Kerry gripped Sue’s hands harder.

Yes!

Sue didn’t blink. “Yes,” she said tonelessly, staring through Kerry’s forehead. “Learn Tribe.”

“We will learn to obey,” Kerry contributed. “Deeper . . . and deeper . .

.”

“Deeper,” murmured Sue, and then her hands were on Kerry’s forearms, drawing her closer. Kerry went with it, following Sue’s gaze in like a homing beacon until their heads turned for the kiss.

Sue’s lips were soft and salty, and her tongue was—right there. Kerry moved against her, her pelvis moving almost on its own, seeking its other. She couldn’t tell and didn’t care whose sounds were which.

“Ahhh,” the senior Tribeswoman said, sounding pleased and a little envious, and she moved off.

They held the kiss.

When it broke, Kerry kept her head against Sue’s, and held her.

“You meant that.” Sue’s breath tickled Kerry’s ear.

“So did you.”

Sue hugged her more tightly. “I scared you, didn’t I?”

“Scared isn’t the word, sweetie. But you’re a genius.”

“Well—yes. Yes I am.” They muffled their laughs in each other’s shoulders.

“Remember.”

The damned senior Tribeswoman was back, and for once Kerry was glad of whatever was keeping her dopey enough not to jump out of her skin. “A Tribeswoman can never have enough sunscreen,” the woman said, holding out one of the fake-ceramic bottles that littered the huts, opened to pour.

Kerry didn’t look at Sue, just felt her tense. This bitch wanted to watch them tranquilize each other?

Widening her eyes, Kerry reached out—and instead of cupping her hand for the first dollop of it, took the whole bottle gently but firmly from the woman’s hand, taking her by surprise.

Before she could react, Kerry let the wonderful feeling of Sue’s body against hers soften her voice as she stared deeply into the senior woman’s eyes. “Thank you, Wise One! Now we can prepare for . . . Ritual.”

She turned and looked into Sue’s equally-wide eyes. “We will find Palmfrond,” she said at random, “and we will all be soothed and . . . obedient for Ritual!”

“Ritual,” Sue breathed reverently, her arm tightening around Kerry’s waist. “Obedient . . .”

Then Sue reached out and drew the woman toward them, deepening her confusion.

Kerry shifted the bottle behind her and freed her hand to take the woman. The two of them held her and kissed her together, probing her opened mouth from each side with their tongues, then kissing her cheeks. Kerry felt the woman’s heartbeat racing.

“We will submit to the drummmmms,” whispered Sue, catching her eye.

“We will worship the flaaaaammmme,” whispered Kerry, letting her voice go husky and seeing the Tribeswoman’s eyes flick almost desperately toward her in turn. Kerry’s own head was starting to spin as the suggestions started to work on her. But Sue’s warm length against her—and even the trembling body of the hapless woman they were mesmerizing—anchored her awareness.

“Soon all will obey Tribe,” she added.

The Tribeswoman’s eyelids were drooping. They gently let her go, but kept their arms around each other. Kerry reached up and stroked her shoulder. “Thank you, Tribesister,” she whispered, letting her sudden warm feeling make it sincere.

“We will find Palmfrond now and anoint her, too,” Sue said with almost scary intensity, and the Tribeswoman nodded, looking at them sleepily as they left the resting area but seeming too drowsy and turned-on now to pursue the subject.

They walked quietly.

“OK,” Sue whispered as they entered an open space. “Who the hell is Palmfrond?”

“From my hut. First name I could think of, except—” Except for Feather. “Never mind. Hope I don’t get her in trouble with that, later.”

She felt no desire to let go of Sue’s waist. “Wow—I think we actually had her hypnotized. You are evil, girl.”

She grinned over at Sue, but Sue’s face was serious. “Oh—we don’t know the half of evil, I think. Oh, god.”

Kerry held her tighter as the fear came rushing back. “Sue, in case we don ‘t . . . I just . . .” Suddenly she couldn’t speak, because she was thinking about Andrea, and the acid of wish-I’d-said was burning her.

They were beside the first of the huts and she paused, seeing no one looking their way. She turned and stood against Sue, looking into her eyes. “This is really . . . there’s just no time but I l—”

Sue’s finger was on her lips and her tongue.

“Not yet,” the other girl whispered. She looked into Kerry’s eyes and shook her head slowly.

“Don’t get me wrong, Kerry. I know I’m straight but I still think I want to fucking marry you when we leave here.” They hugged so tightly it hurt. “I just can’t say that right now.”

Her mouth twitched in a grin. “You know these vacation romances.” But then she kissed Kerry very deliberately and looked into her eyes.

“Meant that, too.”

14.

It felt absurdly, falsely safe behind the first few trees, looking back at the clearing with the huts. The first fires were being kindled, and Kerry knew they’d still be perilously close to the sound of the drums when it started.

Slipping to where Sue had hidden the water bottle had cost time, and filling it when no one was looking had cost more. Sue had started to apologize and Kerry had said, “No—if they found it empty it’s one of them being careless around the zombie-girls. If they found it full—sound red alert.”

Sue had looked at her. “Boy, did I choose the right escape-buddy.”

Now they looked around. Kerry realized she’d been too terrified about a last-minute capture to see the trees as anything but shelter as they slipped through the shadows, away from the Tribe.

But this jungle had taken Andrea.

“Sue?” she whispered. “Before we head out, what are we dealing with out here?”

The other woman shook her head, her eyes glinting out of the gathering dark. “I don’t know if they patrol,” she hissed back. “Don’t think so. Before I lost the pills and I could hear when they spoke, I didn’t get anything that sounded like they dealt with anyone posted out here.”

Kerry swallowed, knowing that Sue’s news changed everything but unable to resist the fear. “Tree spirits?”

She heard Sue mutter, then say, “Sorry. I keep forgetting you were . . .”

“Brainwashed,” Kerry said. “Not a problem.”

“Like I said, Kerry, you broke out of it without an antidote—I don’t just respect that, I thank god for it. If you hadn’t been there to help me, I’d be on my knees tonight without a thought in my head.”

“It’s OK.” Kerry stopped. “No it’s not.

“I mean my antidote was losing someone I cared about. Several someones . . . even poor Liz. But Andrea—” This meant nothing to Sue. “A close friend got called. Hypnotized and carried off by the tree spirits. Yesterday.”

Sue moved beside her. “I’m sorry.”

Kerry took the hand she offered. “Thank you. But something took her. I heard it the first time. Calling her name.”

Sue just held her hand, sensing more would hurt.

Breathing very hard, Kerry spoke precisely. “The thing is, is whatever it is roaming around? Can we run into it? And if we do—”

“Do we hear our Tribe-slave names and get re-hypnotized, and led off?” Sue finished quietly. “I’m thinking not, but it depends on how much they think those triggers still work on us.

“They may just hunt us down with dart guns and nets.”

Kerry listened to her breathe, and said it. “Or just guns. After a point we may just be too much of a pain in the ass.”

“On the scale they’re doing this,” Sue said in a very calm voice, “it’d just be shrinkage.” Kerry heard her swallow. “If I were consulting for them, I’d tell them shoot the bitches.”

They looked at each other.

“We should be so lucky,” Kerry said, sounding braver than she felt because it was so hard for the trembling to get past the lump in her throat.

“End of conference,” Sue said. “Let’s just go.”

They kissed for luck and then Sue was off, finding a streambed and staying on the strip of smooth ground uphill from the gravel. Kerry was on her heels, wondering how much wind she had. A moment of panic that she might slow them down hit her and passed. She thought about running, and knew Sue was trying to get them as far from the hypnotic drumbeat as she could.

If it caught them, she wondered if they’d have time for regret before it put their minds to sleep.

Part of her could already feel her heartbeat changing rhythm to submerge in it.

The rest of her ran like hell.

She wondered if Sue knew where they were going. She didn’t think about it. She considered terrain, realized that if anyone searched for them they’d look for flatter routes like this that would appeal to fugitives. She thought about what lay between them and the other end of the island, cursed herself for not taking the time to research this place, get a map of Dormignonne on the Web.

But who knew this would turn into a POW movie?

Not to mention a white-slave epic . . .

She stopped worrying and kept running.

“Ow ow ow,” muttered Sue up ahead, and held her arms out to keep Kerry from stumbling when she run onto the rocks.

“Getting too dark,” Sue said. “Thanks to Ms Sunscreen. I’ve decided to blame her.”

She looked up at the gathering stars, a bewildering amount to Kerry’s city-blinded eyes. For a moment, Kerry had an almost religious feeling, her awareness leaping from their claustrophobic little peril right past the rest of humanity to . . . the universe.

“Right. We need to start east.” God—Sue was actually reading the stars. Navigating.

As they started up a gentle slope past some thinning trees, Kerry whispered, “Were you a Girl Scout or something?”

“Yep. Mom made me. And yes, I’m sorry I argued with her.” Sue trotted up the hill and sighed in satisfaction at the crest. “Great. We can follow this ridgeline for most of the way.” Talk about choosing escape-buddies—Sue had checked the Web.

Kerry had a sudden warm feeling, and even though it was just whistling in the dark she cherished it. Yes—type-As and detail freaks: don’t fuck with us!

“Whatever that other place is, it’s about due east of here.”

Kerry stood next to her, enjoying her warmth even in the humid hot Dormignonne evening, and Sue looked back. “You have no idea where east is, do you?”

“Nope. I won the argument with my mom. And yes . . .”

Sue laughed and took her hand. “Just look up there. First you find—”

The grass was warm under Kerry’s knees, and her mind was slipping back to the first pulsing night of Ritual when Tribe had devoured her soul, by the time she realized that the drums had started.

Sue had knelt with her, paralyzed by the sound in the same instant.

Her mouth hung open and she stared blearily, desperately at Kerry.

“It’s . . . different . . . now . . .”

Kerry realized the other girl was fighting to keep her mind working. Distance and the trees they’d put between them and the drums eliminated the bass range, and Kerry realized that if they hadn’t it would already be in her crotch like a perfectly-shaped dildo, and her thoughts would be steaming off her darkening brain.

She focused on Sue. Sue was trying to say that her new susceptibility to the drugs in the sunscreen was . . . was . . .

Without the bass the insistent thumping was just the rhythm, but the rhythm was working its patient way into her mind. She was already programmed for it. Her mind had been trained to stop thinking and start responding. It must . . .

How could she fight it? It was . . . Tribe.

She was . . .

No. No . . . !

But she felt the same delicious pull. It was so tempting to give up.

Just to relax. It was like the pretending they’d done before—but with the extra, lovely tang of being real submission.

Then there was something different.

Sue. Holding her. Gently but doggedly. She felt herself being forced down, from her knees to her back. She was looking up at the moon . . .

Remembering. No—no—more women were being taken while she knelt like a stunned animal, stupefied by moonbeams. She’d slept at her post.

Oh god please . . .

“Please,” said someone. Sue. Straddling her. “Kerry, please, I’m slipping too . . .”

She reached up. “Not this time,” she said.

Prayed a silvery figure didn’t sidle up and enslave her again with a whisper.

“I can’t fight it.” Sue’s crotch was sopping through her bikini, damp against Kerry’s lower belly.

Kerry looked up at her, seeing the self-confidence dissolving into agonized lust. She pulled Sue to her. “Neither can I,” she said.

Sue looked at her. “I could . . . knock you out,” she rasped. “I’m not as . . . deeply . . . prog . . .”

Kerry almost laughed. “You’re in no shape to . . .” Then she saw how it would happen: Sue, alone now, with no one to distract her, weakening, tiring, closing her eyes one last time and . . .

Duneleaf opening them.

Looking out onto the world of a mindless Tribeswoman. Raising her arms as she rose to follow the drumbeat and surrender herself.

“No fucking way!” she snarled and kissed Sue almost angrily, afraid of how deep the feeling went.

Then grateful for it, because for that moment there’d been nothing of Tribe in her fevered mind.

Just Sue.

“Sue.” She won a focused stare from the woman bent over her.

“Do you . . . have . . . an idea?” Sue spoke with an effort that almost made Kerry weep in admiration. “Or . . . are . . . we . . . fucked?”

Kerry’s heart leaped. She bemused Sue with her grin.

“Yes.”

15.

“You’re fucked. In the head,” Sue whispered when Kerry explained, astonishment and hope diverting their respective minds momentarily from the ceaseless, inhuman beat.

“We’re too whipped to run, and we’d never make it away from the noise,” Kerry hissed through the rhythm. “When we weakened we’d be hypnotized before we knew it. And if I saw you go under like that, I’d be . . .”

“Don’t say it,” Sue said, and Kerry listened to her odd, uneven breathing. She realized Sue was trying to fight the insidious power of the Tribal rhythm, keeping her body from picking it up by resisting the cadence.

That would make Sue tired, and more susceptible than before.

“It’s the only thing we can control,” Kerry said.

“It could also condition us to get off on the idea of being sucked into being controlled.” Sue shook her head, as her own words echoed in it.

Kerry looked up at her. “But you get to be on top,” she said.

Sue looked at her, and—smiled. “Watch that back-talk, bitch,” she said, dismounting Kerry to slither out of her bikini. Kerry arched her back to do the same, wincing at a stone under her shoulderblade.

“Oh, I just love assertive w—” Sue’s touch as she slid Kerry’s bottom down her legs stopped Kerry’s words.

She was breathing hard and barely noticed that it nothing to do with the fucking rhythm, though she knew the rhythm still lurked.

Sue was over her, the moon behind her and no longer threatening. Sue’s hand on her belly was almost hurtfully gentle.

“Wish I could look you in the face while we do this, Kerry,” she said.

“Sue. I need to say it.” But when she saw Sue close her eyes reluctantly before nodding, she changed her mind. It’s not about self if it’s real.

So instead she said, “I will marry you, dear.”

Sue lay so close their breasts touched. She looked into Kerry’s eyes, and even eclipsing the moon, her eyes showed something to Kerry.

“I know,” she said, “and I love you too.”

She kissed Kerry, and looked down at her, and then turned gracefully before she saw Kerry’s eyes brim and blur the stars. The silhouette of one beautifully-shaped thigh swung gently across those stars above Kerry’s eyes and then the fragrant dark of Sue’s crotch settled to her face. She felt the warm pressure of Sue’s body down hers and the tentative touch of the other woman’s breath across her own pussy.

Sue found her clitoral hood before she found Sue’s, and the delicate courtship Sue’s tongue paid it sang through Kerry, made her bones melt, drew her face up into the softness of Sue and made her seek Sue’s core.

It was a compulsion that Kerry was thrilled to obey.

Drums and Tribe and fear and everything else faded before the need to please the beautiful brave ardent delicious spasming angel that was making her feel so so so good.

Oh my god it is working! faded too.

Kerry couldn’t hear anything from her lover and she realized that Sue’s thighs, flexing and limp in an irregular pattern so much more immediate than the rhythm, were covering her ears. She felt the soft-hard contours of Sue’s ears between her own thighs in an instant of clarity before Sue’s mouth blanked her mind again . . .

Yesssss . . .

Her hands slid down from Sue’s round, surprisingly soft ass to her tighter back, lower to her sides, her waist . . .

She drank Sue’s juice and cried and didn’t notice, and Sue’s pussy and thighs were her world, shaking wonderfully around her head.

She only gradually realized that there was only their own quiet tumult and the little night-sounds. No drums, no pipes, no soul-twisting noise at all.

She felt Sue’s tongue’s attack on her pussy slow and become a gentle friendship again. She breathed, feeling Sue’s now-hypersensitive loins quiver at the touch of air.

Kerry delicately angled up and kissed Sue’s nether lips as tenderly as she might kiss their sisters, and dissolved as she felt Sue lick her in response.

They lay there for a while, Kerry relaxing supine, wishing she could lie forever under the other woman. But Sue levered herself off, taking care to move off of Kerry’s face, and Kerry’s bones melted again as she realized how much willpower it must have taken her lover to do that.

Sue leaned down and Kerry smelled herself on her face as they kissed.

Straightening a bit and touching Kerry’s throat, Sue drew a sobbing breath and stopped.

“It worked,” she said.

Kerry looked up, still trying to work her way back to speech without bawling.

“Except,” Sue said, “now I’m addicted to worshipping you, you devious little . . .”

Kerry surprised herself by chuckling instead of crying. “What an amazing coincidence—Goddess . . .”

Sue shook herself. “OK. Hoo-ee. Damn. How about those playoffs?” She grinned, and it almost did make Kerry cry. “Sorry. Guy noises to diffuse real emotion.”

Kerry kept chuckling but managed to sit up on her own, not wanting to feel Sue holding her again so soon. She reached for her bikini, and saw the motion snap Sue out of it and start her looking for her own.

“You know,” she said, “if we were guys, we’d be licking the ground in front of the High Priestess by now.”

“Yeah,” Sue said, looking around for the water bottle. “Multiorgasmic saves the day. For men—one orgasm and that’s it. We’d have been spent and ready and marching off like obedient little Tribeslaves.

“A musket can never outshoot a machinegun.” She stopped and looked over her shoulder at Kerry, then stepped quickly over.

“Kerry, I love your brain, too.” She bent to kiss Kerry’s temple. “Especially that side.” She spotted the water and caught it up as Kerry rose.

“Speaking of machineguns,” Kerry said, breathing deeply. Sue’s scent still filled her mind and she was glad but her head was clearer, now. She thought about Liz, telling Jennifer about wildlife. “Someone said there weren’t any dangerous animals, but she turned out to be . . . is there anything out there we’d need weapons for?”

“Aside from two-legged roaches, no.” Sue led her along the open ground atop the ridge. “At least according to the data I found. These weirdos might have imported something and not told anyone.”

“Who would they tell?” Kerry asked. “When we get to the installation, who ‘s the cavalry? What flag do they fly?”

Sue was silent for a few steps. “I never thought to ask. Or look.”

“Well, no big deal. I’ve been having ‘if I’d only known they were slaver hypnotists’ moments for a while now. Who knew?”

“Debra knew.” Sue’s anger seemed a bit less focused now. “She was my recruiter, if that’s the word. I’ve been hating her since I started to see what the sunscreen was doing to my cabinmates. Since I realized I was on a slave ship.”

Thinking of Liz, Kerry closed her eyes for a moment. “She’s what we would be if we hadn’t found each other.”

“I know.” Sue walked without speaking for a while. “I wonder if she knows what she’s doing.”

Kerry felt sad. “Only what they tell her to know, I suspect. If they let someone leave the island it’s because she really does—belong to them, body and soul. Debra, and Liz . . . they’ve been through really powerful brainwashing, something deeper than we have. I don’t know if they can awaken from the trance they’re in.”

“They’re dead,” Sue said, and Kerry couldn’t answer. She was thinking of Liz in the office, covering for her, helping a new secretary get her feet on the ground, standing up to one of Ms Forsyth’s more insane deadlines and getting it pushed back . . .

She reached for Sue and they walked hand in hand for a while.

16.

It turned into helping each other over rough spots along the way, as the ridge grew higher and the ground more broken. They slowed down without agreeing aloud, knowing what a broken ankle could mean in a hole hidden from the moonlight.

Just as Kerry was going to ask Sue about her harsh breathing again Sue hissed, “God, am I out of shape!”

Kerry was going to say I love your shape but she realized they’d been walking on level ground for a while and Sue was still wheezing.

Hypertension.

She turned to Sue but then Sue said, “Trying to think if they. Know we’re gone. Sleeping mat-check was kind. Kind of sporadic. Wonder when—”

“Sue.”

“Huh?” Sue took her hand again. “I’m cool. Just out. Of shape.”

Willpower. Sue was making the fragments into sentences just by speaking them.

Kerry couldn’t stand it.

“Sue.”

“What.”

“Sue—stop.”

“We can’t stop—”

“Sue!” Sue turned to her with almost-convincing anger on her face—which evaporated when she saw the expression on Kerry’s.

The turn also showed how she was carrying her left arm. Like it hurt.

They stopped. “I swear it’s reflux,” Sue said, at least able to get through a sentence. “Just acid reflux from . . .” Her face twitched, and Kerry thought willpower again, but now she thought of the pain that must have shot through her lover just then.

“We’ll stop right now,” she said, almost welcoming her own fear because she could only imagine how frightened Sue was.

“No, we—” But this time Sue couldn’t hide it. Kerry was beside her, holding her, helping her down to her knees.

They knelt together in the moonlight, saying nothing.

Kerry felt her heartbeat, its regularity.

Please.

“How old are you?” Kerry whispered into Sue’s hair.

“Twenty-nine.” The answer was steady but very, very quiet. They moved together, breathing, and Sue added, “I had my first one at twenty-five. That’s when they diagnosed me.

“Funny. I used to think it was a better deal. I did not want a stroke. My dad . . .

“Mmm. Thank you, Kerry. That feels really nice.” Kerry kept rubbing her back, gently. “My second one was two years ago. Still sort of mild, but I started to . . . whatever. The damage was done.”

Kerry closed her eyes, too full of dread to put many thoughts together. “Oh god,” she whispered, “I wish I were a doctor.”

“What the fuck could—oh no I’m sorry, no—” She felt Sue stiffen after it slipped out and held her more closely.

“Sshhh. Calmly. I understand Sue, don’t worry.” She ran out of words quickly, but it stopped the crying before it could start.

“Shit. Oh, Kerry, I wish we were back in our offices.” They held each other. “A bad day at work is better than a great day in hypnotic slavery.” Laughing hurt, but it didn’t.

Kerry kissed her. “I love your brain too.”

After a while, they were more comfortable, Kerry sitting back on her heels and Sue curled up in her lap. Sue looked up at her. “So what now, huh?”

Kerry closed her eyes, imagining a litter party of Tribeswomen coming up the ridge for Sue. Maybe . . . some medics from the shore compound. Lithe, strong, competent Marilyn, in her tight lycra, taking charge, a bright medical kit.

Her bright, pretty whistle.

Swinging gently, irresistibly in front of Kerry’s eyes, while Marilyn whispered her back into slavery.

Obeying Marilyn . . . obeying . . . Circe . . . Kerry was starting to lose herself in the layers of control they had put into her mind, but she was ceasing to care.

Inside her mind, Kerry knew she was just fleeing the dread, the shame of not being able to help the closest friend she had now. Inside, she was vaguely horrified that she was submitting on her own, without drugs or drums or hypnotic baubles.

That just made it more tempting. She could obey, accept, rejoin Tribe, open her loose, soft mind . . . they’d make her forget grief, forget shame.

Forget Sue.

She looked down, outside her dampening mind again, and what she felt for the girl lying quietly in her arms was so strong she couldn’t move.

But Sue could die, and it might be the only chance to keep her alive.

Kerry swallowed. “I could go back for help.”

Sue kept looking at her. “I love your sense of humor.” She didn’t smile.

“It’s your life,” Kerry said.

“No,” Sue said quietly. “It’s our freedom. You may not throw that away. Not for me. You’d die before you let them turn you into one of those zombies again.” She reached up and stroked Kerry’s cheek. “Yes—I know why you thought about it. It’s harder when it’s for someone else.”

Kerry nodded. “Someone I love.”

“Right.” Sue sighed. “Besides, it’d be for nothing. I doubt they’d do much for me. I’m damaged goods like this. They’d just put me down. I doubt that coronaries look good up on the auction block.”

Kerry tested that idea, thought of people who might like that, and thought of being conditioned to obey them.

Thought of something spinning in front of Sue’s eyes until she smiled blankly and learned to want that. Kerry stayed still in her mind, like a swimmer in the water, until the shark-thought lost interest in her and left.

She nuzzled Sue instead. Just fearing death was bravery enough. “No. They wouldn’t.”

Sue nodded absently. “Like I said before. Shrinkage.

“So we find a hiding place for me, and you go for the cavalry.”

I’m not leaving you. Kerry heard it in her mind, saw Sue watching as she knew it was there. But this was no time for that.

She leaned down and kissed Sue. “So it’s due east?”

Sue nodded. “Just keep those stars on your left. The ones that form . . . oh, never mind.” Sue helped her orient from the moon and gave her some simple patterns to remember. “Besides—it’s where the sun will be coming up in a few hours.”

Kerry realized she wanted just to go to sleep right now, holding Sue, escaping from it all, and almost didn’t want to go. But this bit of night was one of the few advantages they might have, and she had to use it. There’d be time enough to hold Sue in the hotel room when whoever it was bedded them all down before taking statements.

Suddenly Sue was looking at her—ashamed. “I’m sorry to fall apart on you like this. I don’t want you to have to do it alone. I really . . .”

Kerry stopped her mouth with a kiss. Then she said, “You saved me. You freed me and you got me out of there before they turned my mind into tapioca. Don’t—what?”

Sue was holding out the water bottle.

“Huh-uh. Nope.” She met Sue’s frown with her own. “I’ll find a stream. I’m more mobile than you are.” Sue opened her mouth.

“Sue.” Sue closed her mouth. “Sue—I’m not going to be thinking of you lying back here curled up and maybe . . .” maybe dying “and realize I didn’t even leave you some fucking water.”

Sue looked into her eyes, and she saw she’d won.

Won. All she had to give Sue was the water Sue already had. And a long, lonely wait.

Kerry hated them all.

“I’ll remember this spot and when I get back—”

Sue shook her head. “No. Don’t. If I could hypnotize you, I’d make you forget.” She smiled sadly. “While we’re on the subject of shit happening, OK? If they catch you, you can’t tell them about a hiding place you never saw.

“I’ll risk being hard to find if it’s the cavalry you bring.”

Now it was Sue’s turn to win.

They kissed, and said the only thing left to say, and Kerry got up and started walking east. She tried not to hear the sound of Sue working her way into the trees and down the southern slope of the ridge, away from the Tribe village.

She listened to night sounds, she thought about who she might meet at this installation, she looked up at the stars to check her progress even though the ridgeline was pretty much guiding her anyway, she worried about getting raped by a bunch of isolated oil drillers or whatever they might turn out to be. She filled her mind with everything she could but the terrible loneliness she was trying not to feel.

It didn’t help as she thought about the woman she was lonely for. The very cells in her body ached for Sue, and she tried to get away from how hard she ‘d fallen for the other woman. She tried to tell herself they were fated to make it, that two people didn’t find themselves drawn together in such downright bizarre circumstances unless it was all going to work out.

That kept her going for quite a way.

Then she realized that even if she found help, even if some country’s entire fucking navy just happened to be over the horizon on an exercise and came down on Queen Lines like a ton of bricks, they might never find Sue.

She cried so hard she was afraid she’d miss her footing. But she kept walking.

There was a glow in the sky ahead of her after a time, and by now she was exhausted. Too much had happened and she’d been going since the morning.

And her last sleep had been a hypnotic trance, induced by someone pretending to be a tree spirit.

She wasn’t even rationalizing by the time she found a fairly well-hidden place in the curve of an old tree, and guessed, hoped, that nothing nasty called it home, and nothing poisonous visited. She curled up and went to sleep.

17.

The sun was well up when she woke. She wasn’t hungry, and didn’t notice thirst yet. It was disorienting to wake up clearheaded and away from the erotic chaos of entwined bodies in the hut. The numbing sweetness of sex and incense.

Of mind-control drugs. She breathed the humid but clean air of Dormignonne ‘s midmorning.

She even felt better about Sue. She could make it, and fetch help. Sue couldn’t get that far from the place they’d parted. She started down the end of the ridge, recalling Sue had said it ran almost to the end of Dormignonne where the installation was.

It was deeper in the jungle that she felt eyes on her. She took it for a while. Then she turned.

Down a lane through the trees to her left, a Tribeswoman glared at her.

Oh shit. Something made her stop before she bolted the opposite way, and she saw movement in the leaves to the right, a flash of royal blue at about butt-level, there and gone.

She wondered if they’d surrounded her on purpose, or just stumbled onto her. She tried to feel the way they wanted her to go—right between them? Back to the ridge? She couldn’t let them herd her.

She wished Sue were here. Then she was glad she wasn’t—she didn’t want one of them to have to sacrifice herself. She let it flow from her mind.

It struck her that the first woman was actually quite close . . .

Kerry ran straight at her.

The woman’s shocked look made her feel so good, and Kerry almost felt like she was flying as the woman stumbled aside and out of the way. Kerry sprinted past her, then cut toward what looked like a thicker part of the trees.

A moment later she heard shouting behind her, and then gasped to hear answers from elsewhere. From beside her—? She prayed to the real jungle gods that it was just strange acoustics.

Nothing from ahead of her, anyway.

She’d hope they didn’t know where she was going, that they felt she was just an aimless runaway. She’d drift north and then change direction again.

Maybe the Tribeswomen themselves had no idea about the setup at the east end, had just been commanded “Find them.”

That hope lasted as long as it took Kerry to realize that the slaves knew only what their owners chose to put into their brainwashed heads, but the owners must know about the sanctuary. She almost stumbled as she imagined what they might have done about it. Trading smiles on the boundary line with the blissfully ignorant outsiders—and behind the screen of trees, stringing electrified wire, pits, sensors, quiet patrols.

In the meantime, owners, someone, throwing groups of slavewomen across this end of Dormignonne, programmed into some ancient Tribal hunting ritual.

Kerry felt the twinge in her pussy at the idea of ritual.

She stopped next to a tree and hid, trying to deal with the new danger inside. I have to resist, she told herself.

A noise spun her head over, but nothing followed. She thought about dart guns, and shivered.

“Obey Tribe.”

They were there.

Her heart almost seized and she thought for an instant of Sue but all around her they were coming out of the trees. She’d almost run into three of them before she’d stopped on her own.

They were all colors, many shapes, all wildly beautiful, and all frightening with their identically-dazed faces. Kerry didn’t recognize any of them, but realized that she hadn’t really seen anyone but her three friends before she started on the drugs and hypnosis with the rest of them.

She might have slept with half of them in the dreamtime of being programmed before Shadow Queen docked.

She looked around. There were at least a dozen of them, and they all wore nothing but their collars and the royal blue panties—and a strip of lime-green tied around the left upper arm. Some ancient Tribal hunting . . .

She wasn’t wearing one. Whatever these women had been told to think, they knew to look for the girl with no green band. Some of them might not be from her own “village.”

How had they gotten here? Were there other “Tribes” all across Dormignonne, never finding out about each other because everyone was brainwashed, docile, and kept inside an assigned—?

Her mind was trying to keep her from collapsing. But the knowledge it gave her was just making it worse. There was something very cold-blooded about this, someone deliberately plotting the destruction of her mind, of all these women’s minds.

Worse than the mindless fanaticism of . . .

“Tribe,” the women said.

All together.

The sound hit Kerry in her upper chest and she slid to her knees, dizzy. She knew it hadn’t been that loud, but it had slipped past her mind into her body.

She couldn’t fight. She was too programmed. Too conditioned.

“You will obey the will of Tribe.” She turned at the voice, frightened already at how its very coldness made her wet. I must be punished . . .

It was Warmth.

(Liz! Liz! It was—Liz?)

L—Warmth raised her hand, and so did the others, and Kerry knelt upright, naked before them, feeling her resolve run out between her tightening thighs.

No! I have to—resist! As long as I can . . . Sue . . . Sue wouldn’t . . . She tried to think of how divine Sue’s juices had tasted, how strong and brave and . . .

Kerry saw the ring of pointing fingers and unblinking eyes, and heard herself sob once.

“Submit to Tribe! Submit to Tribe! Submit to Tribe!“

She stopped thinking.

She started needing to come.

It was like a powerful tongue ravishing her cunt, like some inhuman cluster of tentacles reaching into every quivering part of her.

She was so open as she knelt, looking at them, feeling their hatred and contempt.

Loving them for it.

Her hands rose before her on their own. She looked wildly at one woman and then another, feeling the power they were focusing on her, flattening her will, her feeble, puny, stupid will . . .

Her un-Tribe little will.

It bothered her, until she remembered a moment of peace, of blissful openness. Her mind, numb in the chanting, let the moment of submission open in memory.

On watch over the field of sleepers. Her mind, utterly captured by the unblinking moon, bound to it with a simple command in a voice she obeyed without thinking.

A voice that told her, “You have no will. So all is well.”

So simple.

She had no will.

She used what she’d been foolish enough to call her will for one last choice.

She started to call out, “Submit to Tribe!”

It tasted better than the sweetest pussy.

She remembered the black-haired bitch in the village folding under the power of Tribe, yearned to be the good obedient Tribeswoman Dove’s Cry that had led the chant that crushed her, pined for a chance to be Dove’s Cry again.

Her chant was in time with theirs. She saw the awareness gone from their eyes as they shouted at her, saw Warmth as mindless as the rest as Tribe flowed through her into . . .

Into . . . Dove’s Cry.

She started panting, the delicious pain starting up in her. She felt the chant like a warm shower over her.

Trying to stay upright, so they could see her welling pussy and rock-hard nipples and open, weeping face and know how low Tribe was pressing her, she had to yield to the need between her thighs.

Tribe was inside her too, and it was all right. One more thing she was too weak to resist.

Too obedient to want to resist.

Too mindless to think of . . .

As Dove’s Cry bent forward, curling onto herself, helpless before the Tribeswomen, a corner of her mind that could still put thoughts together let her remember the black-haired woman she’d helped Tribe destroy, and as she toppled to the earth she realized why the woman had curled up and fallen.

Giving up her soul, she was coming too hard to stay upright.

18.

Dove’s Cry looked up, transfixed by the glistening beads of sweat on the tan of Warmth’s belly over the waistband of her Tribe-blue bikini, unworthy to look higher until she was told to.

She wondered what she could do to earn permission to lick each bead, one by one.

Her mind softened in a haze of coconut sunscreen, and the scent of Warmth through the blue fabric.

Warmth was damp, and Dove’s Cry hoped it was her submission and defeat that had turned on the elder Tribesister. She waited to be condemned. She was calm. She deserved nothing.

She had betrayed Tribe. She must be punished.

Someone’s voice said so, and suggested how. Their loathing for her made her nerves quiver eagerly even through the vagueness of her trance, and she was distracted from wondering whether she really could be fucked to death.

“That is for Priestesses to command.” Warmth’s voice was steady; Dove heard the power that Tribe had poured into the other woman, to use her. “We must obey.”

Dove murmured it devoutly with the others.

“Dove’s Cry.” Warmth took her chin and tilted her head back, and Dove would have started crying at the light touch if she could have done anything but fall into the Tribeswoman’s gaze.

“I obey Tribe,” she whispered without really thinking. There was a memory of gentle touching, of caring, but she couldn’t finish . . . couldn’t . . .

“Yes. You obey. We all obey. We are Tribe.” Everyone said it, and Dove’ s Cry said it with them.

“Now we will return. The Priestesses will tell us what to think.”

Dove’s Cry whimpered in anticipation, looking forward to the new/old sensation of opening her trance-slicked mind to let someone stronger slide new ideas into it, making them part of it, making them part of her.

Making her part of Tribe.

These new thoughts would be about her punishment. It would be about suffering for her sin against Tribe. It would hurt.

Dove’s Cry was getting wet just thinking about it.

Warmth helped her stand and let Dove lean against her for a moment of aching gentleness until she knew she’d recovered enough from being reabsorbed into Tribe. Warmth looked into her eyes and nodded when the balance was right. Dove’s Cry could stand by herself.

Dove’s Cry would not think for herself.

All was well.

The walk through the jungle was pleasant and warm. Dove was half-entranced just by the motion and the presence of her Tribesisters around her. It was so much nicer than another walk through this jungle that she couldn’t quite . . .

There was a noise, part thump and part twang, and then there was a screaming spherical shape swinging slowly over the path they were on. Dove gaped, startled by the screaming but soothed into relaxed stillness by the . . . swinging . . . until someone jerked her aside and she saw the other Tribeswomen disappearing into the leaves on either side of the path.

She came to rest against someone warm, and the soft skin against her with danger nearby made her almost think of (Sue) but the swinging distracted her again, drew her.

It was a Tribeswoman in a net. They’d sprung a trap.

Dove’s mind felt almost like someone else’s as icy chains of logic came quietly together.

Who set traps?

Not tree spirits . . . but why couldn’t she summon the superstitious dread of the tree spirits?

It was Warmth herself beside her, and Dove’s Cry recalled that first night and her fearful teaching of what was out there.

Out here.

The Others.

Dove looked up at her Tribesister, crying out for help, and the mesmeric motion of the net was washed away in guilt. If I hadn’t run away she wouldn’t be here. She almost called out “I’m sorry” when a hand fragrant with sunscreen covered her mouth.

She looked at Warmth, and nodded slowly. Warmth released her. Silently, feeling tears hot on her cheeks and dimly knowing they were for so much more than this, she took Warmth’s hand and bowed her head against it. Warmth stared at her. Dove’s Cry struck herself in the chest and lowered her eyes.

She felt Warmth take her chin again, drawing her gaze up.

Very slowly Warmth nodded, and wiped one of her tears away.

Then the elder Tribesister looked out at her trapped companion, and Dove knew she was going to go out and try to free her. Dove felt herself pressed back and knew Warmth meant her to stay hidden. She saw Warmth slide down behind the leaves for a few paces, so she’d emerge away from Dove.

I am a worthless transgressor and she protects me, she thought.

Just as Warmth stepped out of the jungle onto the path, looking down for other traps, there was a higher-pitched twanging and something hissed through the air. The trapped Tribeswoman gave a startled little yelp and quieted down. Dove saw her relax into a tangle of limbs, her eyes not quite closed but quite empty. Something small and straight gleamed from where her bare asscheek pressed against the netting, with a pretty yellow plume at its end.

Dove’s Cry blinked, and waited for another dart to stop Warmth and drop her sleeping where she stood, but none came. She heard laughter and looked the other way, where they’d come from.

Saw the Others.

Two women strolled down the path, radiating—power. They were like Priestesses but not like—they seemed vibrant and carefree as happy young Tribesisters.

One of them held the long-barreled dart pistol, and unhurriedly slid another one into it. Both wore rakish khaki safari outfits—short-shorts, snug sleeveless vests draped in light gear, brown leather boots laced tightly round their calves up to their knees, wide-brimmed hats tilted jauntily over their gathered hair.

They were graceful and beautiful and they made Dove’s Cry’s head spin.

Behind them trailed three other women, walking like Tribeswomen entranced in the depth of a ceremony. They were nude, without even Tribe garments over their loins, wearing harnesses that wrapped under their breasts and framed their crotches. Their pussies were shaven smooth, like their entire bodies, and their collars were wide and stiff and dark, not like the friendly Tribe-tokens.

Their eyes were unfocused and their faces placid.

Dove didn’t know whether to pity them or envy them.

Warmth was out there.

She stood still, not trying to run away when she knew the booted newcomers could see her, though they didn’t seem to pay much attention to her.

“No,” said the one with the gun. “Not much of a challenge. I just couldn’ t stand that racket. I could hit something much farther . . .” She looked around, and Dove was suddenly wondering which of the others wasn’t hiding well enough, which sister would feel the sting before she heard the hiss, and fall asleep before she knew she’d been seen.

Warmth stepped beside the net with its tranquilized burden and put her hand on it. Dove saw her jaw tighten, realized how afraid Warmth was as she tried to take her Tribeswoman back. She wanted to run out and help her but didn’t know how.

Someone else thought she did. Dove heard leaves rustle to her right—and then the dart gun sang again and there was a drowsy little cry as the Tribeswoman went to sleep, perhaps still dreaming she was leaping out at them.

As the first reloaded, the second Other unslung her own dart pistol. She looked at Warmth for the first time, leering at her breasts and seeming to feel her with her eyes in a predatory way that made Dove’s Cry even more afraid.

And wetter.

19.

“Do you want to buy this?” the Other asked Warmth, delicately poking the unconscious woman in the net with her pistol.

“She is Tribe,” Warmth said firmly.

“She is ours,” the Other said, her tone full of laughter.

“No.”

Instead of arguing, the woman snapped her fingers and called without looking back, “Sleepy Eyes.”

One of the nude women trotted up beside her, still staring blankly but alive with eagerness.

Locking eyes with Warmth, the woman said, “You are just a witless savage from the jungle, but I’ll humor you, because it’s such a hot, slow day.”

“Cass,” the first Other said warningly.

“It’s fine,” Cass said, not looking away from Warmth. Was she hypnotizing Warmth? No. She was fascinating Dove, though. “We can take them all. And if the idiots back there can’t solve the problem without this fucking—cattle drive—I don’t feel obliged to keep to the script anyway.

“How are you called, pretty savage?” she asked Warmth. Warmth pursed her lips to answer and then shook her head. Maybe she had been a little hypnotized—but giving her Tribe name to a stranger broke her out of it.

“Pretty is a good enough name,” Cass went on, unperturbed. “You’ll like it better after a few lessons.

“But I’ll buy this slut from you, Pretty. For some pretty things.” She reached to Sleepy Eyes as the slave stood placidly, taking something from a pouch on the slave’s harness as though rifling a horse’s saddlebag. She extended her closed hand to Warmth, who stared at it, her eyes widening.

Dove knew and covered her eyes, but Warmth had no chance. She heard Warmth gasp at the quiet clicking. Then a blissful “Oooooh . . .”

“Pretty?” asked Cass in a silky voice that tickled Dove’s pussy with its very falseness.

“Pretty . . .” Warmth’s voice sounded younger, almost stunned. “Pretty . . .”

“See how they catch the colors? And how the colors catch your eyes?”

Dove tried not to imagine the handful of plastic baubles that had just captured Warmth’s mind, knowing just the idea of it might dazzle her own.

“Your thoughts are so easy to lose in them, so little, so cheap—just like them,” Cass purred, and Warmth moaned her agreement.

“Just more trinkets. Like this little slut here, worth nothing but what price I set on her.”

“Yesss . . . slut . . . " Warmth was caught, and Dove felt a coldness in her stomach at how easily the Other was making Warmth forget how much she cared for the woman she’d just risked her freedom for.

And lost it.

Freedom. Dove’s Cry was confused, and thoughts of Sue were finding their way out into her mind again. She was thinking, and she knew how this was going to end.

“Pretty trinkets, hmm? And Pretty is a trinket too, a cheap little bauble in my hand.

“You are in my hand.”

“I am in your hand.” Warmth’s voice was meek, all the firmness gone. Dove realized how deep the Tribal weakness for these bright shiny things must be. Warmth sounded like she was already as much a slave to Cass as the girl, Sleepy Eyes, who stood obliviously by.

She heard whispers from the leaves around her. Other Tribeswomen had looked. They were under the spell, too.

Cass could have them all by waving a necklace of cheap beads. Would gain a necklace of blissful obedient women to take back with her to . . .

Dove’s heart turned to lead as she began to realize where the Others had come from.

It almost numbed her to the pain of hearing Warmth surrender herself.

“You are worth what I tell you.”

“I am worth what you tell me.”

“You are worth this bead. Look into it now, Pretty. See how empty it is? Just as your mind is empty except for the light my voice shines through it. The light doesn’t stay . . . it passes through. Just as your mind holds no ideas.

Dove heard Warmth sigh. She sounded tired and happy.

“Here is the bead you’re worth, Pretty. Take it now.

“There. I’ve just bought you.”

Dove’s Cry tensed to run, more afraid than she was seduced and anxious to flee before that balance shifted.

“I have a bead for each of your pretty friends. You’ll tell them to come to me, won’t you, my Pretty?”

“Yes. I will tell them . . .”

“But since I own you now, you must obey me. Hmm?”

“I must obey you.”

“Yes. See how the ideas shine through your obedient little mind like the light? You must obey me. You won’t sell your friends to me for beads.

“You’ll give them to me for free.”

Dove heard the slightest hesitation before Warmth’s sleepy voice responded. “I will give them to you.”

“First, you must beg to . . .”

“Cass. It’s too fucking hot to play that game out here.”

The harshness of the voice made Kerry realize how dangerous it was. She looked up at Liz, risking a glance at the lethal trinkets. Liz stood slack-jawed before her new mistress, robbed even of her Tribe identity now.

You tried, she thought. I forgive you, Liz.

She waited.

“Good girl. I will accept your friends. But first you must give me the bead back.”

Kerry thought about belonging to someone that . . . small. About being helpless, mindfucked, obedient, when her imagination got uglier. Unable to run. To want to run.

She ran.

Something whispered past her ear and she crouched over as she scurried, aware she was presenting her ass as most of her rear aspect but with no idea how well they could see it. Or if.

Instinct told her to hit the ground and she actually felt the breeze of the second dart.

“Shit,” she heard one of them say.

“It’s all right.” Cass’s voice. “Somebody just didn’t get enough of her trinket indoctrination. But this hypnotizes them all.“

Kerry lay still.

“Go ahead. Cass. I think I have her now. If she leaps, she sleeps.”

“’ If she leaps, she—?’ How lame.” Cass snorted.

“OK, little slavegirl. Little Tribeslut. Listen to your mistress. I have something here that will make you happy and sleepy. All you need to do is look when I tell you to.”

Kerry hugged the ground under the leaf cover, knowing how close she still was to the path.

But she was desolately certain that she’d find a whole encampment of safari-girls with dartguns and dazed harnessed slaves in the unlikely event she made it to the east end of the island. Sue . . . I hope you never find out what it really is, there.

She was too burned out to cry.

“Just watch,” said Cass. “Watch and come to it. Come out to me and obey me. Now, slavegirl.”

The first safari-girl said, “Not working, Cass. She thinks she—”

“No one told her to think,” said Cass, with a calmness that made Kerry’s skin crawl. “But if she insists . . .”

Suddenly she heard Liz cry out. Kerry could almost hear the plea, but Liz’ s hypnotist hadn’t told her she could plead, and there were no words. The scream got worse, and she knew Cass just wanted her to know the voice, before it grew distorted.

“That’s right,” Cass said reasonably into a pause. “Just keep doing that every five seconds until I tell you to stop.

“And don’t faint.”

Kerry swiveled. If she ran, Cass’s friend would nail her with a dart. She thought of crawling away.

Liz’s next scream found an instinct in her deeper than self-preservation. She looked.

And saw the shiny silver whistle.

It swung, slowly, and the only time Kerry could tear her eyes from it she saw—Liz—something in her hand—burning—!

She fled it. She let the bright swinging thing take control of her, let the gentle rhythm mount her free will like a familiar rider and take her down into trance.

The commands entered her thoughts and changed them, and being hypnotized was the only way she could remember functioning now.

She felt herself rising, half-expected to feel a dart, but nothing flew at her.

Nothing had to. Cass was in her head, and her fear was melting into her slavelust like butter into warm milk.

She realized she wanted to step back through the leaves and join her mistress on the path.

“Made you look,” she heard her mistress’ voice say, and then a laugh she hadn’t yet been trained to live for, and only feared now.

“’ Made you look’? Talk about lame,” someone else said, equally meaningless.

Then meaning entered her mind. She heard the truth.

She spoke it. “I must obey you.”

Oblivious to Liz’s shaky-voiced commands, to the dazed Tribeswomen obeying them by stumbling out of hiding, to everything but her mistress’ voice and the whistle, she repeated it.

Kerry was almost homesick for the village, for sunscreen, for ritual.

But as most of her mind shut down under the light-and-shadow of the whistle that swung endlessly behind her eyes, a small part held a warm wiry shape with dark hair and labored breathing.

You tried too. Keep trying. You may not throw that away.

Kerry let that part of her go dark before someone else could snuff it out. She worried, for an eyeblink, if she’d ever remember it.

Then she just thought about obedience, as she followed her mistress back.