The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

It was Rowan’s third night on the divewatch. The FreedomForce stealth ship Tigershark slid between the islands, its dull surface shunning the Caribbean moonlight.

Near the horizon, a cruise ship lit up the night with its lamps and fireworks. A few sensors, and a pair of bored human eyes inside Tigershark’s combat information center, took notice. No one on the liner, of course, had any idea the stealth ship was there.

Hopefully, neither would the Dark Queen, who had her own eyes, and worse, ranging the warm seas around her latest castle.

Deeper inside Tigershark’s main hull that bridged the catamaran sections, Rowan joined the gathering in the briefing room. Technically, the update could have happened over an intercom, with the CIC duty officer briefing the Force leader. But Rowan knew Commander Megan Wintour was the kind of leader who recognized and cherished the team.

Rowan hadn’t been with FF for long, but she was already sharing the bond that made them forsake sleep and study and sex, to come together and keep watch for a teammate putting herself in harm’s way tonight.

So passengers on a cruise ship can party in peace. She didn’t begrudge them that.

“Minisub One released Cassie at 2330 sharp,” said Marcy, the dive captain and Rowan’s boss. Beside her like bodyguards, sleek in their purple-and-black FF wetsuits, were Rowan and a couple of the other taut-bodied girls on divewatch, who at any moment might have to get wet to back Cassie up. “Her scooter passed system checkout, and she was away within a minute. Sub One got a ping from her at 2340, and then she went silent as scheduled.”

Technically, Rowan and the others should be standing by with the rest aboard Minisub Two. But they’d go there after this anyway, and while Rowan was still a trainee she’d seen how fast they could move through Tigershark in an emergency. They’d done it for real, once, when the Dark Queen sent her brainwashed amazons to try to seize the ship the hard way. They’d taught Rowan how, too.

“Any activity from the target?”

“Negative, skipper.” Linda, one of the junior techs, turned from a console that she’d slaved to the panels in the CIC. “Nothing in, on, or above the water, and our listening posts on the island have nothing going on. Just the usual guard patterns.”

Rowan hid a smile. Bright, earnest Linda was shapely in the purple-and-black FF bikini that had become Tigershark’s unofficial uniform, but she still looked soft and tentative among the athletic bodies of the regular FF operatives, like a starlet among Olympians. Fortunately, everyone treated Linda and her fellow geeks like colleagues instead of mascots, fully aware of how much Tigershark and their own gear depended on the tech force.

“Swimmers?” Marcy asked.

“Nothing on the ‘phones,” Linda reported crisply, then peered covertly at her board to make sure nothing had changed in the last half-second. Marcy did smile, but Rowan’s comrades didn’t seem to notice. Rowan felt Commander Wintour’s eyes on them all.

Just as the divers needed someone up here, to hear and see how things really were going for Cassie’s mission, Wintour liked being able to eyeball her people and know who and what she could actually throw in after Cassie, if their scout got into trouble.

If she did? This is Sassy Cassie. Rowan didn’t let that show, either. But none of the divewatch girls reacted to Wintour’s regard. Kylie, looking casual with her wetsuit unzipped nearly to her navel, leaned back with her tousled red hair against the bulkhead, her slouch belied by a lidded gaze that missed nothing.

Next to her, almost at attention, brunette Pam had her suit zipped to the collar, breasts outlined in the clingy fabric. She held very still, but her fingers played nervously on the knife strapped to her bare thigh. Part of the divers’ tension was knowing that as the mission ticked on, they’d go off-duty, and have to let their relief shift be the ones who’d rush to Cassie’s aid if she needed it.

Rowan, being the new kid, just tried to blend into the wall panels.

“How about our local contact?” Helene Seeger, the FF Headquarters liaison, perched on a chair in her prim but sexy white maillot. She hadn’t yet gone fully native and slipped into purple-and-black.

“Simone’s still standing by.” Linda consulted the CIC feed once more. Tigershark’s duty crew appreciated Wintour not holding this worry session in the CIC itself, while they tried to work. “She’s observing silence, too, but her last transmission was that she had a clear path to Cassie’s landfall and the hideout’s still undiscovered.”

Simone was one of the islanders who’d realized the danger when the Dark Queen, in the guise of a “reclusive industrialist,” had set up her estate near the old colonial fort. She’d contacted the FreedomForce before she knew it was the Dark Queen at all. Simone had seen some of her fellow islanders fall under the Queen’s spell, and was trying to discover how the Queen was turning innocent bystanders, even enemies, into her devoted servants.

“Skipper, are you sure Simone’s pure civilian?” As Marcy spoke she noticed Pam’s fidgeting with the weapon, but said nothing to her diver. “I’m thinking she might get in over her head.”

Rowan remembered the impression the young island doctor had made on them all back at Headquarters, before Simone had returned home as their new forward asset. She’d briefed them on what she knew of the Dark Queen’s mansion, then still under construction. She was petite, and even a little intimidated by the hardware and Tigershark and especially by the FreedomForce women themselves. But there’d been a fire inside, and many of them could imagine her picking up a gun and personally going after this mystery witch who was so insidiously enslaving her home.

“She didn’t ask for combat training,” Wintour said, “or even for weapons. The com and security stuff she took very seriously—more so than some of us did, first time.” Rowan started guiltily but Wintour cocked an eyebrow instead at Kylie, who couldn’t help smirking. “She knows Job One tonight is making sure Cassie gets in safely, and Job Two is being ready to support whatever Cassie finds she has to do to get things ready for when we all go in. No crusades.”

Marcy nodded, accepting that her girl was in good hands, but Rowan spared herself a moment of worry for their native ally. Simone had been to medical school in Paris, but come back to her island to practice for love of the place and the people. In her golden gaze there had been courage that made Rowan both proud of her, and afraid for her.

“Cassie will be fine,” said a voice from the other side of the room. “And she and Simone will help each other do what they need to do.”

They turned as Dr Vere stepped away from the maptable. The team shrink wore an open white labcoat over her FreedomForce bikini. On her toned body, the effect was less absurd than very sexy.

“I put Cassie through her hypno-resistance refresher last night, and did a spot-eval on her at the same time—both in and out of trance. She’s in top mental shape for this.” Dr Vere smiled and ran a hand through her ash-blond hair, lifting the wide-lensed glasses from it and settling them back on her nose. “She’s still Sassy Cassie, but she really did internalize the cautions from you.” She pointed at Wintour and Marcy, watching both women relax a little.

“As for physical shape . . . she won’t go out of her way for asses to kick, but if she finds one . . .”

Everyone laughed, and Rowan gave Dr Vere silent points. She’d turned their worry for Cassie into a subtle pep talk.

2.

The water was warm on Cassie’s bare legs as she kicked. She smiled grimly around the mouthpiece: it was so thoughtful of the Dark Queen to base herself here in the tropics instead of, say, Kamchatka.

Like last time. That bitch!

The surface above her was a dim ceiling, and the rugged base of the headland bulked dark ahead of her. Minding the current, she worked closer to the dark mass, now pushing the scooter that had pulled her most of the way from Minisub One. She tried to think of the stony mass as reassuring and hiding her, but behind and above it—inside it somewhere—was that base, tunneled into the headland below the deceptive ruins of the old Spanish fort.

Well, I don’t have to infiltrate it myself. Just find that cavemouth, snap some pics, then head on to rendezvous with Simone. The next time she came here she’d have all her FreedomForce friends around her.

Cassie shook her head as she came slowly around the sloping wall, looking for the darker patch that’d be the opening Simone had told them about. Supposed to be big enough to slide the whole minisub into, if they could’ve risked bringing it in this close—there. Reaching to the camera clipped onto the scooter’s housing, she took some shots of the approach.

She kicked, and slid to a soft landing against the rock, finding a crevice to lean the scooter into. She unclipped the camera and slipped her wrist through the lanyard, then swam over toward the opening. Yes, it was big—hell, big enough for an entire missile sub to hide in. It looked like the crook between tree roots, but the sides were meters high, changing the scale of Cassie’s perceptions. Floating down, she felt almost acrophobic as the opening loomed both over her and under her, suddenly conscious of flying. Blinking, she snapped herself out of it and took some pictures of the opening, then tentatively swam toward it.

Part of her, gloating about lurking here undetected underneath the Dark Queen’s lair, wanted to turn on a very small light and sneak in. Another part of her, that said nothing good lives inside long dark caves, wanted to teleport to the scooter and buzz out of here to safer shore.

She wondered if Simone were expecting her yet: amateurs worried early. It made her guilty.

Maybe I should just go in a little way. Find out if there are rockfalls or something that blocked it.

Cassie floated there, treading water lazily and gazing into the shadow. That would also be a great way to find out if there were traps or mines or even guards. She looked down at the gearbelt that cinched her narrow waist over the wetsuit, and the knife on her thigh. Adventure tugged at her.

No. Idiot Heroine Girl would paddle in there and get killed. I am not Idiot Heroine Girl.

She gripped the camera. The FreedomForce’d need the digital photos for the next step. She’d take some more of the surrounding area, so they’d know how to set up when they came here in force to rock her Queenship’s world. Before kicking upward, she looked in at the dark one more time, so it would know she wasn’t scared.

Her universe blazed white.

As Cassie hung stunned, it went blue, then white again. The flashes went on, oscillating too fast to count or even fully sense. Her eyes hurt but then went numb, as if the flashes were keeping them open. Cassie could almost feel them on her skin, licks of warmth. She was too dazed to notice when they began pulsing in a pattern. Before she could think, she could sense the pattern, almost know it. Its rapid skittering beat tapped maddeningly all over her brain and itched her into needing to know it.

There was a humming Cassie never identified as her own moan of pain and surprise and confusion. She bit the mouthpiece hurting-tight. There was pain in her hand and for a sane moment she remembered the camera she now held in a deathgrip.

Then she forgot the camera because the flashes brightened and clanged like bells that shattered her thoughts to powder and left no room in her brain for anything but the pulsing dancing rhythm and Cassie just stared and stared and stared and . . .

For a while she hung there, slowly beginning to sink as her body stopped moving to keep her depth. The lights flickered savagely across her frozen form a while longer, and then their rhythm changed again, slowing as they dimmed, suddenly restful. Freed from the pitiless grip of the flashes, Cassie slowly relaxed, soothed now into staring further. Her hand loosened and the camera floated out of it until the lanyard at her wrist snagged it. It moved back and bounced gently off her wrist.

Cassie never felt it. As she settled, motionless, she still faced inward to the great portal where the lights had captured her. Her pupils grew and shrank in synch with the pulsating brightness.

Now there were distinct lights to see, and her stripped mind saw and thought only of them. As they patterned upward together, Cassie’s mind filled with the new compulsion and her body sluggishly responded. She kicked dreamily and moved her arms, rising again to float before the opening until the lights stopped and took away her purpose.

Cassie hung like a sleepy mermaid, but her eyes stared unblinkingly between the softly-glowing lights. There was very little in her thoughts now. Only waiting for the lights to brighten and harden and spear into her mind and empty it again.

They flashed, a brief flicker like the crack of a trainer’s whip. The wetsuited girl jerked upright in the water. Her eyes were saucers behind her mask, and the lights echoed too loudly in her head to hear herself whine around the mouthpiece.

They dimmed again, and Cassie stared in wonder at a new pattern. The lights flowed inward this time, a spinning ring that sped away from her, shrinking . . . and another . . . and another . . . regular as her heartbeat, slow as her thoughts wanted to be. Hypnotic as the waves on a beach.

The pull was irresistible, but the lights had left no resistance in Cassie. Without any thought, she surrendered to the pull and swam slowly into the cave. Once she was inside the pattern her mind shrank and she was just another circle of light moving mindlessly into the cave.

When the lights began flowing upward, Cassie swam with them unquestioningly. Even in the dimmer light she stared into infinity where the rings of light contracted and vanished. What little was left of her consciousness disappeared with each light-ring. She’d become one more pulse in their rhythm as she swam.

She rose into brightness. Just as her head broke the surface, the lights changed pattern again, dimming and slowing. Nothing flashed here, but the lights were in her mind by now, where she couldn’t escape them. A soft grip on her thoughts, like a training harness forcing her to keep her body upright.

Cassie tread water automatically, staring through the mask without really seeing the railed walkway in front of her. She kept breathing through the mouthpiece even as the air cooled on her face.

Very, very distantly, Cassie knew she’d been put under some kind of control—and by the most dangerous possible people. But just the flowing motion of cycling her legs and moving her arms to tread water soothed her. Like the gently-rippling water that tempted her to look down and lose herself in its wavelets.

She didn’t. She couldn’t break her fixation on infinity ahead of her. Her brain still tingled with flashes, and they made her want to be limp and rigid, empty-minded and full of flashing pulsing ringing . . .

Cassie floated like a buoy and waited to be told what to do.

3.

In a quiet laboratory deeper inside Tigershark, Dr Vere sat upright before a large-screen computer monitor. Aside from the faint glow of various controls on the dormant machines in the room, the only light was from the swirling, pulsing patterns on the screen. They washed across her expressionless face and their reflections flickered in her eyes, which seldom blinked, even when she nodded.

Instructions kept blooming in the colors and patterns, flowing directly into her mind to be absorbed without resistance. There had been a time when Dr Vere looked into the swirling colors and actually tried to resist, but that had been dealt with. Her will and memory had been corrected. She knew she’d resisted, but she no longer remembered it.

She nodded frequently. Her training had been effective: she knew no answer but Yes.

Certain commands made her wet. Dr Vere saw herself doing terrible things to serve her Dark Queen, and fantasized hotly about doing them. It thrilled her now that the Queen had converted her to obey without question. Her hands went nowhere near her crotch, but long masturbation sessions in trance had imprinted her with the sensations. A subliminal symbol could now make her feel a long stroke up her pussylips or a tap on her clit. Each one welded a new truth to her thoughts.

When the program ended, she closed the window on her system and carried out other tasks to erase signs of its presence.

She smiled at the scenic desktop scene the monitor showed her now. She had one more thing to erase, and was programmed to enjoy it.

“Hi, this is the helpdesk!”

“Hello, Linda. It’s Dr Vere.”

“Hi, Doctor. Um—I was actually just going to call you. There was an unidentified datalink to your lab—”

“Yes, Linda. My computer was just in unauthorized contact with an outside system. That’s against security procedures, isn’t it?”

“Um, yes, Doctor. It is.” The girl sounded more uncertain.

“Why didn’t you break the link, Linda? The way you were trained to? Or contact me?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Doctor?”

“Yes, Linda?”

“It’s so, um, weird. I mean, I saw the alert window start blinking when the link opened, but before I could even think what it meant I just noticed how really . . . relaxing . . . that was.

“The . . . mmm . . . pulsing. It just felt nice. To watch it.” The tech’s voice was softer, dreamier. “Part of me knew I should report it, but it was like being . . . rubbed . . . inside . . . too . . . nice . . .”

“What did you do then?” Dr Vere’s voice was soft, too, as she swallowed her need to pant. It soothed Linda into staying in the half-dreamstate.

“I remembered that what I really must do, was turn off the alert and wait for further commands.” She sighed.

“So, I did. And that felt niiiiice.”

Dr Vere grinned, remembering how Linda had mewed when she’d finally been conditioned to obey that reward-jolt.

“But—Doctor?” Now that she’d been allowed to think about it, instead of staring blissfully into her displays, Linda was coming out of the trance. Much more slowly than a free girl whom Dr Vere hadn’t trained, but she’d still need to be subdued.

Dr Vere grinned again. Linda was a pretty subdued girl already.

“What, Linda? You sound worried.”

“Something’s . . . wrong, Doctor. Isn’t it?”

Dr Vere muted her headset, to moan unheard. It was very difficult for Linda to think—even now her mind was too sluggish to put it together. Linda was a very keen-witted girl, but not when she had these special talks with Dr Vere.

Unmute. “What could that be, Linda?”

“I’m—I’m trained to report attacks. Right? Deal with them. Sound an . . . alarm.”

“Alarms are so loud, Linda. So disruptive to peace and quiet and sleep.”

“Yes . . . sleep . . . what? Um, Doctor, did you say . . . ?”

“Relax, Linda. Just tell me what’s troubling you.”

“OK.” The girl subsided. “I just sat here. And didn’t do . . . anything. Just let the pretty flashing mesmerize me and then turn it off before anyone else could . . .

“Oh, no . . . I was hypnotized . . .”

Drowsily, Linda was fighting her obedience. She had an admirably strong will. Only her unquestioning trust in Dr Vere had let her lower her guard that first time, and allow herself to be hypnotized. That trust had even let Linda accept without hesitation the deeper, more explicitly enslaving commands some women needed drugs to accept. But Dr Vere’s natural abhorrence of abusing trust and sinking her hooks deep into Linda’s mind had long ago been removed, along with anything else her Queen had found useless or dangerous.

It didn’t matter. Linda’s unconscious resistance, weaker each time, was an opportunity instead of a problem. Crushing a subject’s resistance trained her to submit anew and to enjoy it, making her more of a slave than before.

Dr Vere knew how it felt. They’d done that to her until she began begging for it.

“But you can’t be hypnotized now, can you, Linda?”

“Oh—that’s right, Doctor! Of course. I’m under your hypnotic-resistance training.” The girl gasped with trained relief before her will and worry reasserted themselves. “But, then, why would I—”

“I can tell you why, Linda.”

“Really, Doctor?”

“Yes. When you violated your training, you were obeying a posthypnotic suggestion I gave you. My hypnosis was more powerful than the training, or your free will.

“And now you’re completely hypnotized again.” Dr Vere’s warm voice finished the trigger without malice.

“Yes, Doctor.” Linda’s voice was suddenly calmer, more subservient. “I am completely hypnotized again. Your hypnosis is more powerful than my free will.

“I must obey. What are my instructions?”

Dr Vere tightened her thighs as her victim succumbed. “You will perform the standard instruction set I implanted in you, Linda. Confirm, please.”

“Yes, Doctor.” The girl managed to sound both sleepy and efficient as the sequence took control of her. “When you awaken me, I will have no conscious awareness of your unauthorized computer use. I will delete it from the running log and erase the backups without thinking about what I am doing. I will restore the alert settings that I turned off ten minutes ago without knowing why.

“Then I will forget everything I just did. I will not wonder why you called, or notice any missing time.”

“Very good, Linda.” Dr Vere raised her hand to the headset. “Awaken—now.” She snapped her fingers.

“Hey, glad you called, Doctor!” The girl’s perky, eager voice was as clear as her memory. “It’s been a slow night.”

“Ah. No nefarious villains trying to break into our system?”

“Nope! None at all. Wimps.”

“Yes. I know how well-trained you all are to report those when they happen.”

“Um—Doctor? I was wondering.”

Dr Vere savored the hesitation.

Linda was breathing a little harder, too. “Could we, um, I mean could I, have another”—she swallowed—“h-hypnosis session? Sometime?”

“Of course, Linda.” Dr Vere licked her lips. “I look forward to hypnotizing you.” Saying the word must have sent the girl’s hand between her thighs. She wondered what Linda was wearing there, alone at the midshift desk.

“Whenever you want to,” she finished, as if she hadn’t detected Linda’s heat. Actually, it would happen when Dr Vere had some time for it and triggered her to ask. It would be useful to reinforce the girl soon, though. She’d been very responsive to the conditioning, but it was always good to keep the control current and strong in a new slave.

“It’s just—I don’t want anyone else to know, you know?” The embarrassment was another implanted suggestion. Linda had originally thought it would be cool to be taking the same kind of training the actual infiltration agents got, but that was one of many thoughts Dr Vere had corrected after she had Linda under hypnosis. Now Linda was programmed to conceal her new, intense jones for being tranced.

“Thank you!” The cute techie could make herself useful on her next visit here, too. After she was deepened, Dr Vere could use her to minimize the traces on her own computer of the Queen’s latest control program before waking her up.

“Good night, now.”

“’Night, Doctor!”

Dr Vere glanced at the clock, and turned up the lights a bit. Standing, she slid her bikini bottoms back up and took the towel off the chair. After washing her hands, she shrugged into the lab coat and was walking to the office door when someone knocked.

In the corridor, right on time for her appointment, stood Pam, in a bikini this time, knife still on her leg. Off divewatch by now. She met Dr Vere’s eyes almost resentfully. “OK, Doc. Reporting as ordered.

“Skipper said I’m due for reinforcement.” She exhaled through her nose like an irritated mare. “For more hypnotic-resistance training.”

4.

The water moved on either side of Cassie, and she swayed limply on the ripples. There were hands on her arms.

“Relax. Come with them.”

There was enough left of Cassie’s mind to know the voice was smug, even a little cruel, but most of Cassie was so blank that it became the voice of God to her. Each syllable flashed into dazzling Law inside her head. She melted into compliance and let herself be pulled to the water’s edge and helped out. Her body and the tank were suddenly heavy and she stumbled against someone’s smooth leg.

“Stand.”

She was instantly upright. It had been impossible to do anything else. She blinked, still reeling.

“Hold still.” The voice owned Cassie’s mind. She froze.

“Don’t resist.”

The command novocained her brain and body as they handled her. Hands were slipping the tank off her, pulling the mouthpiece from her numb lips. She kept twitching with the impulse to stop it, to do something, but do not resist kept stunning her docile.

Then, as she felt someone gently take away the gearbelt and unstrap the knife from her thigh, it was a little easier for Cassie to think of not wanting this. To imagine . . . resisting . . .

She tried reaching for the knife, dazed at how hard it was even to think of moving.

Lights still rang and blazed in her head, even without the voice. The lights wanted her to stop thinking again, to keep staring, to remember being flashed into blankness. Cassie needed to obey the lights. She faltered, relaxed.

Someone gently stroked the hood from her hair and settled it behind her neck. That soothed her further back out of thought. They stroked her again, fingertips mussing her short wet dirtyblond hair.

“Pretty thing, isn’t she.” It wasn’t that voice but it compelled her. She was a pretty thing. She might get . . . played with . . .

The lights flickered behind her eyes, charming Cassie out of knowing why she shouldn’t be a pretty toy.

“Shhh.” It stilled her and she waited. “She’s to obey only my voice.”

Only her voice. Yes. Cassie must obey only her voice. The lights throbbed it to her. Yes. Obey. Cassie would—

clangggg

Metal hit metal somewhere nearby. Something dropped. Real sound, not the dream thunder the lights made in her brain. She was somewhere. She tried to move, to walk, to . . . just turn her . . . head from . . . staring . . . where she’d . . . at the . . .

. . . lights . . .

“It’s too hard to think.” It flared in Cassie’s weary head, draining her of any will to try. She felt almost relieved. “Instead,” the voice soothed, “it’s easier to relax, and listen. Easier to listen, and obey.”

Cassie swayed where she stood, head full of that truth. The air cooled her legs and arms now, and she was wet under the suit, but it was still easier, just as the voice said. Cassie sighed and grew still, waiting to obey. Maybe she could just stand here and listen and go to sleep.

But the carillon of bells and lightning that owned her mind was falling apart now. She began to know her head hurt. Pain spoiled the bliss of standing stupidly and waiting to be told what to think.

I’ve been hypnotized. It was good to complete a thought, even if it was a scary thought. It woke Cassie a little more, enough to sense what kind of place this was. They’d done something to her, hypnotized her right in the water, and made her bring herself to them. Lured her inside the Queen’s lair, into some kind of dive chamber deep below the headland.

That’s not supposed to happen! Cassie resented briefly the forgotten hours she’d spent staring at whatever Dr Vere had used on her. I’m supposed to resist this shit!

Nothing changed her need to obey. She waited.

“Show us—”

Cassie shivered as her brain lit up again, wiping away what she’d just been thinking and leaving darkness, like a flashbulb. She needed the command, but it didn’t come.

“No,” the other voice muttered. “First ‘think,’ then ‘show.’”

A grunt of grudging assent.

In the pause, Cassie’s mind flickered back to awareness. No—I am resisting. Just thinking is resisting. Without Dr Vere’s conditioning, she’d be too lost in the trance even to know she was in trouble. At least now she knew what was happening to her, even if she couldn’t disobey. Yet.

“Think about anything you have concealed in your wetsuit.”

It swept through her again before she knew it, but then she did know it. She couldn’t help complying, and it was hard to focus on anything but the special gadgets.

“Show them to us.

“Give them to us.”

Cassie plucked each from its hidden sheath—multitool, flare, antidote pack. She moved from memory, still staring forward because the voice hadn’t told her to look anywhere else as she obeyed.

It terrified her to disarm herself like this, not even seeing into whose palm she put each of her secret weapons. But the compulsions flashed delightfully in her mind, charming her out of wanting to resist. Being subverted shouldn’t feel this good . . .

“She looks sooo hot doing that,” said the other, “first-think” voice. As it jarred Cassie further into wakefulness she heard someone make an irritated sound. She could understand, now—they wanted to keep her under control, and didn’t want her roused from this obedient half-sleep.

Cassie was awake enough to track that. She might be able to snap herself out of it, if that’s what they were afraid of.

“Obey and do not resist.” The flashes erased more thought, and Cassie waited eagerly again for command. It took her several heartbeats to remember why that was bad.

“Unzip that suit and let it down and show us what you’ve got.” The pulses compelled her again and she felt her hands rising, the zipper sliding down. Cassie drew the sides open, feeling the air on her tits and belly, hotly aware that she was still staring helplessly into space.

It stopped her. She didn’t think they were going to rape her right here but the sexual side of this was pulling her out, dimming the mind-numbing flashes. She still felt weak and that voice still rubbed her inside and made her want to obey.

But the hypnosis was wearing off.

“She’s fighting the trance commands, " someone said. She wasn’t sliding the suit down her arms as commanded.

“She’s a fighter.” The first voice sounded unhappy about that.

Don’t like girls who hit back? Cassie was angry before she could think, and it was too soon to get pissed at that voice. She was still under its influence even if the spell was fading. I have to fight. Fight . . . the . . . commands.

She knew how dangerous it already was that she didn’t remember hearing all of them. Part of her wanted to keep stripping, be topless with her arms half-bound behind her in the stretchy suit. Even if she woke up she’d be screwed.

Worse—if that first voice kept talking it might make her forget anything but the commands.

“No!”

Her own voice surprised her, pealing strangely among the soft sounds. It sounded rude, almost ugly, even as it faded weakly in the big quiet space. Speaking hurt her head, already tender from the flashes and from being so empty, but her mind kept clearing. She shut her eyes and made herself wake up some more, to look around.

The trance had trapped her gaze—and her mind—so much that until now she hadn’t even seen who had her.

It was like being back with the gang on Tigershark, but these women were her friends’ evil twins—a couple of muscular women in combat pants and tank tops grinning fiendishly at her, one holding a shockprod like a conductor’s baton. Mercenary types.

Behind them, women in minimal black vinyl bikinis, hair slicked back, stood ramrod straight with their hands flat by their sides. Two were beaded with water—they must have been sent to pull her out, while she’d floated in oblivion.

These women stared past her expressionlessly. It wasn’t discipline that held them frozen and quiet, but something more like very intense hypnosis. Something like what had overpowered her own mind and drawn her here, blank and unresisting.

Cassie shivered at how helpless they were. At how helpless she’d been. Would be again, if they used the lights on her. She shivered once more and tried to stop, horrified to admit part of her wanted the lights to dazzle her mind away.

“Already awake.” Shockprod Woman stepped closer. “Damn, she does not want to behave.” Cassie must still be loopy from it, though—it almost sounded like praise.

“Her Majesty’ll be disappointed the hypnostrobes didn’t—”

She was fast, but Cassie was too, and as the woman whipped the weapon against her Cassie was already falling away and reaching for whoever was beside her.

She couldn’t get clear. The prod burned against her and she cried out, but the one she’d grabbed spasmed with her in silence. They slumped together on the metal deck, and Cassie realized she’d gotten not a smirking mercenary but another of the hypnotized women.

A slave. Maybe with nothing in her mind but more lights and a controlling voice. Cassie almost apologized before passing out, but she was too frightened. Whatever the Queen did to women here to make them into this, there was nothing to stop her from doing it to Cassie.

5.

Pam had let her hair down. It floated like shadow over her tanned shoulders as she stalked into the lab. Her bikini let Dr Vere see the muscles of her whole body telegraphing her worry about being put under, and her reflexive anger at being worried.

“You really don’t like being hypnotized, do you, Pam?”

“No.” The younger woman seemed surprised to be asked. “No, I don’t. I don’t like someone having that much control.” Her eyes narrowed, as if she suspected Dr Vere was about to drop her into trance right there. “Or being made . . . willing.”

“You don’t like the submissive role.” The word rippled into Pam’s consciousness.

“Hell no.” Pam didn’t smile.

“Preferring the—dominant one?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Pam’s tone said exactly that.

“Would you like to sit down, Pam?” Dr Vere gestured into the lab, to the alcove where she performed the hypnotic inductions and training. With her other hand she lightly touched Pam’s arm, as if trying a skittish horse.

Pam still looked wary. “Isn’t Kylie here? We’re supposed to get reinforced together.”

“She’ll be here soon. I asked Megan to give me a little extra time to work with you first.” The brunette grudgingly moved a few steps toward the comfortable loungers facing the screens. She glanced at them and then away, remembering staring into them—before remembering ended. Looking back at Dr Vere reminded Pam miserably that the shrink could first-name the Commander, and that she herself was now identified as difficult.

“It’s all right, Pam. Being resistant isn’t a bad thing—it’s just you, and how you react. I know the Skipper sympathizes with you. Another control-freak.”

Pam smiled dutifully and briefly. She fidgeted with her knife.

“I just—I don’t think I really need it, Doctor. I mean I tense up and resist right here, when you do it to me, and you’re one of the good guys.”

Dr Vere could still remember when she might have felt bad for Pam. That just made it more arousing to feel her new, programmed urge to trance the girl crosseyed.

“Well, Pam—I always do end up hypnotizing you, don’t I?” Pam trembled and nodded. “If all you have is raw willpower, you’ll eventually meet someone whose drug, or machine, can make you more susceptible. You may not even know they’re using it on you—you’ll sabotage yourself by believing it’s you that’s weak. Then you won’t even really have willpower.

“Instead, in a little while, they’ll have you.”

She stepped forward to invade Pam’s space, putting a palm against the girl’s toned belly. Pam widened her eyes but didn’t pull away. “And if they did, Pam! Think of it. This strong body, these trained reflexes, all your skills—completely under their control. Their mindless weapon.” She stared into Pam’s eyes, as the girl’s heart hammered above her hand.

“Hypnotized into unquestioning obedience.” She could almost see the images flood Pam’s mind.

“You may be especially vulnerable to that, Pam, precisely because you think you’re dominant.”

Now Pam did pull back, flushing under her tan. But Dr Vere had already established control—the strong brunette didn’t retort, and she didn’t break the doctor’s gaze.

“Real dominants, like Megan, are secure in it. They can accept others’ power, even deal with people that don’t yield to them. Those who are defensive about it, hostile to anything they even think is an attempt to control them, are often really submissives themselves.

“In denial. Secretly terrified of how it might feel, finally being found and subjugated by a stronger will.”

She stared into Pam’s eyes. “Terrified of how much they’ll want it.”

No, the girl’s mouth said, but no sound came out. She’d grown still, arms limp by her sides, breathing deeply and evenly. It was exactly as she had been trained to respond, but Dr Vere expected nothing else from this subject.

“You really do need to be trained. Because you’re a pushover to hypnotize.”

Suddenly she glared at Pam. “Now stop wasting time. Submit. Obey.”

The girl’s attitude had already crumbled, and the abruptness stunned her. She gasped, but she couldn’t look away, falling deeper into Dr Vere’s eyes.

“Obey.” She put her fingertips to Pam’s temples. The girl whimpered once. She twitched, a last spasm of resistance in a body she no longer controlled. Her eyes were huge, fixed on her hypnotist’s.

“You are weak, Pam. Eager to submit. You want to be told what to think. You will obey.”

The prepared phrases slid into Pam’s mind like control rods, tamping down her mind’s reactions to a passive quiet. Her own need to resist sucked them deeper into her thoughts.

She was completely under control, now. She let Dr Vere take her to the lounger and lay her back, directing her gaze to the screen. The swirling patterns opened with symbols coded into Pam’s conditioning, capturing her instantly.

Dr Vere whispered the mantra she’d chosen. At once Pam began repeating softly, “I love being trained to obey.” In a little while she’d be ready for the earbuds.

Stepping away, Dr Vere considered the anxious, defensive girl who’d arrived a few minutes ago. Pam really was a natural submissive, sensed it, and fought it with every fiber of her being. Joining FreedomForce had been part of her struggle. Before Dr Vere had been enslaved, she would have helped the girl come to terms with it, and even teach her to resist domination.

Now, of course, she was able to focus on how best to control her. Pam would cling fiercely to whatever did rule her mind—the illusion of independence she thought she wanted, or slavish devotion to whoever finally got past her defenses. She’d never be the flexible but completely obedient slave Dr Vere had become, but Pam could still be useful as something simpler and less conscious. That strong body and intense spirit would indeed become someone’s weapon—as one of the Dark Queen’s inner bodyguards, perhaps. Whatever She wished Pam made into, Dr Vere would provide.

But now came another knock at the door. Kylie, just when she’d been told.

Kylie was tense, too, but her slight grin showed it was the strain of eager anticipation.

“Hello, Doctor.” Her voice was sultry, and she hid the nervous swallow with skill. “I’m here to be hypnotized again.” She kept smiling at Dr Vere, almost aglow. Her bikini was in FF purple-and-black, but just triangles and straps, the daring version Commander Wintour was officially not noticing. It softened Kylie’s muscularity, made her more . . . ornamental.

She’d clearly worn it on purpose.

“Dressed for comfort?” Dr Vere grinned. Kylie blinked, a little embarrassed but too aroused to back down. “Hmm. Looking forward to the session?”

Kylie closed her eyes and swallowed, then opened them, taking a half-step closer. “I was just masturbating, Doctor. Before I came here.”

“Were you, Kylie?”

“I’ve been—” Kylie’s voice was rough. “Fantasizing, Doctor. About you.”

She put her hands behind her. “That you’ve been hypnotizing me, all of us, into obedience. To you. Into your willing slaves.” She blinked, but kept breathing deeply. “That’s—wrong, isn’t it? Doctor?”

“What do you dream I do to you, Kylie? When you’re—obedient?”

Kylie shivered. She’d expected a rebuke, even if she was too turned-on to resist saying this aloud. Now she had permission.

“You fuck me, Doctor. You play with me and you make me like it and then you wipe my mind. You strip me and put a leash on me and walk me around the ship so everyone can see how obedient I am. Some of them are your pets, too.”

She closed her eyes and shivered again. “That’s really fucked up, isn’t it?” Reopening them, she looked at the hypnotist almost desperately. “I mean that’s what we’re trying to fight, right? That’s what the Dark Queen does to women she captures?”

Dr Vere ignored the question again. “Are you attracted to me, Kylie?”

Kylie exhaled, and stepped nearer, moving her hips. “Yes, Doctor. A lot. I wish you were using me while I was—in your power.” Saying it made her moan. “You could just hypnotize me . . . ohhh . . . to forget . . .”

Dr Vere smiled and let her yearn for a moment, then reached up to cup one of her breasts. “Maybe I have, Kylie.” The redhead’s eyes widened.

“Should I fuck you now, Kylie?” She moved her hand to the girl’s crotch, outlined in the strip of purple-and-black, feeling her spasm. “Or when you’re in a trance?”

“Doctor—oh, please, while I’m awa—” Kylie had noticed the soft play of lights from the alcove, where the display had already opened Pam’s mind. Dr Vere led her over and she gaped at her friend as Pam mouthed her mantra, panting at how enthralled the other diver was.

Dr Vere was proud and thrilled to see Kylie’s conditioning work. It kept her from glancing at the screen and being transfixed by the pattern, and she didn’t even notice. Or notice anything odd about what Pam was repeating about obedience. All Kylie knew was how entranced her friend was, and how much it was turning her on.

“We can fuck on the other lounger,” Dr Vere whispered. “Right where I’ll hypnotize you. Right next to her.”

Kylie looked shocked. And hungry.

“She’ll hear and remember only what I tell her to, Kylie. Just like you.” She let Kylie look back down at the other girl. “Think of the orgasms—close enough to touch a girl who’s too deeply hypnotized to know you’re coming.

“Or, would you rather be just like Pam?”

Kylie stiffened as if Dr Vere had clitstroked her again. Dr Vere knew her answer, having put it into Kylie’s mind herself. But she still enjoyed hearing a girl beg for it.

6.

Cassie woke suddenly and fully. She blinked up at halogen lamps whose warmth she could almost feel.

They’d stripped her before tying her to the chair. A moment’s attempt to thrash in her bonds taught her the chair was solid and bolted down, and the bonds were tight. The chair was metal, cold, but had warmed to her where they’d lashed her to it. She tensed in mild panic—she’d been unconscious long enough for that to happen, and being plopped bare-assed onto cold metal hadn’t woken her up.

The clinical halogens glared down, displaying her like some kind of trendy live-art installation and leaving the rest of the room dark to her. There could be an audience beyond that light, watching a fit naked girl writhe in bondage. She tried to hold still and listen, and then she shivered again. If someone really was out there staring, or even jerking off, she was defenseless and they could get up and—

Cassie realized her legs were tied to the chair’s, forcing her thighs apart and showing her cleft to anyone who looked. The metal was warm under her pussy, too. And . . .

Fuck! She was getting wet. What the fuck was wrong with her? Cassie refused to consider that the feeling might be from outside her.

She was wet? How could this shit be turning her on? Cassie pursed her lips to hide her shock from the unseen watchers and thought hard. Fuck. She wasn’t sure she liked the alternative: being fondled after they’d stunned her. Maybe Shockprod Woman played with her after she was strapped down, still asleep and doubly helpless.

Hell of a time to find out I’m kinky for bondage. She gritted her teeth before catching herself. She made herself face the other possibility. Shockprod Woman might also have talked to her, while Cassie was out—with the voice Cassie had already begun to obey. If she’d commanded Cassie to be turned on . . .

Fuck no. No. I just need to get laid, when I get out of this. Really. That’s all.

God.

Then, almost as a relief, Cassie pictured one of the brainwashed women masturbating her instead. Doing it on command, gently but automatically like a machine, just because Shockprod Woman had ordered her to. The slave might have stared blankly down at Cassie as she did it, or just gazed off into space.

Cassie tried to remember if she’d dreamed while she’d been out, but it was all . . . blank.

It was easier to remember the rhythmic flashing. For a few seconds the lights in her head seduced her into dreamland again, and she almost didn’t want to resist them.

But she had to. Even if it meant awakening to here, strapped to a chair, waiting for—whatever. And damned if she’d let them find her spaced out and staring before they even tried anything.

Cassie tried to relax herself, and looked out past the light, wondering if there were devices there, headsets or helmets or whirling hypnodisks they’d wheel over to brainsmooth her with. She knew they were dangerous, but she wasn’t their usual raw material. Dr Vere’s training had at least let her start to snap out of that first trance, and Cassie gave herself points: nobody’d expected those freaky strobes anyway.

The lights dimmed a little, and after a moment Cassie could see, sort of. The room was fairly bare, too big and high-ceilinged to be a cell. Certainly not much of a mad brainwasher’s laboratory—unless the tortureframe and the mind-melting sarcophagus were behind her chair. She was facing the door but it felt like there was a lot of room behind her.

Then, she noticed she wasn’t alone. Two women stood motionlessly on either side of the door.

She knew they were slaves. Bound like this, she hardly needed conscious guards. In the shadows she couldn’t really see their unblinking gazes, but their poised stillness told the same story. They weren’t identical—the one on the left was petite and willowy, her companion tall and lushly curved—but the poses and the scanty black swimsuits made them look that way.

Her Queenishness had put them here as a mindfuck. She wanted Cassie to see what she’d be turned into and freak out, or give up.

Fuck that. Cassie made herself smile at them, and only realized her mouth was dry when she opened it to speak.

“Hi,” she told them, pleased with how steady she sounded. “I’m Cassie. Who are you guys?”

Her body tried to slacken into a casual stance and it was like the whole chair, the whole place, suddenly grabbed her tight. It was just the bindings, but she couldn’t help a little yeep of shock.

The women didn’t react at all, much less answer. Watching them as closely as she could, Cassie hadn’t seen even the twitch of people told to play dumb but still tempted. These girls were fucking statues. Did they even know she was here, or where “here” was? The Dark Queen might just leave them blank when she wasn’t using them.

Cassie felt other words die in her throat and stared at them, bodies and minds completely under someone else’s control. Under that particular someone’s control. And that someone had her strapped naked to a chair . . .

It was a mindfuck, but for a few seconds knowing that didn’t matter. Seeing the slaves made it easier for Cassie to believe there was something here, maybe behind her or in the next room, that would blow through Dr Vere’s training and leave her helpless, open, receptive. Maybe even wanting to be converted.

Then they’d fit Cassie with her own little black bikini and focused stare. She’d forget everything but a need to obey all orders from Shockprod Woman. Or anyone else the Dark Queen gave her to.

No. Huh-uh. FreedomForce would come for her. She was already overdue for contact, and they’d know something was wrong. They might already be sneaking up to the headland underwater.

They’d find her scooter, and the cavemouth. Maybe there’d be guards, and those hypnotic strobes might knock out one or two of her friends—no. They’d know something was up. Her Queenosity wouldn’t get any more FF girls, anyway.

But the bitch had gotten Cassie, hadn’t she.

She still felt stupid for being gotten like that, her brain turned to obedient putty by some disco lights. Forced to sit still, she was remembering how open her mind had felt. How just seeing the lights flow away had become a command she’d felt and loved with her whole body, how good it had felt not even to be able to fight, just to obey . . .

Dammit!

Well, she’d snapped out of that trance, if not soon enough to save herself. They’d sounded surprised when they said she was fighting it. Maybe Cassie was tougher than she thought, and that strobe-trap left most intruders still docile and hypnotized by then, not waking up and pissed-off like her.

She felt a little better. She didn’t want to get cocky, but maybe, after all, she’d be able to hold out longer than the ol’ Queenster expected. It took time to brainwash someone, let alone turn them into the robots her two empty-eyed guards seemed to be. They looked pretty thoroughly conditioned, and that hadn’t happened overnight. Long before Cassie was marching in unblinking lockstep with them, the Force would have busted in here and gotten her out.

Of course the Queen had to expect that, too. Especially since Kamchatka, FF had been foiling her for months—well, not the whole time, but she’d acquired a newly venomous respect for them. She knew they’d investigate when Cassie went missing. Maybe she had some way to mask that entrance, or at least fake a cave-in. She might try to make it look like Cassie’d met a shark or something further offshore. Ding up the scooter or just leave it . . . had they found it?

Cassie froze. Had she told them, while she was out? Had she just been stunned by the prod—or had they hypnotized her again?

Maybe after she was under she’d started to talk, when someone had rubbed her clit the right way.

Suddenly Cassie felt way more naked and bound than she had. She could wake up, sure, but they could put her back to sleep. She couldn’t be certain. But if they could already get into her mind, then tell her to forget they’d been there, then make her want to obey that order . . .

Oh shit.

It didn’t change anything. Whatever they did to her, Cassie had to hold out and wait for her friends to rescue her.

I’m not a slave. No one’s programmed me. This mind’s a little confused, but it’s all mine!

It felt good to think that.

Then she wondered if the two girls staring past her now had told themselves that, before.

The door opened.

7.

Rowan knocked and Dr Vere opened her lab. It was dim, and the psychiatrist said nothing as she led Rowan in.

“Sorry I’m late.” Rowan heard herself whisper as if entering a sickroom. Crap. I’m responding to the dark and quiet. Already being conditioned. She wished it didn’t make her feel like such an ideal subject for hypnosis. Even if that’s sort of why I’m here.

Dr Vere’s eyes were almost luminous behind her glasses. She watched Rowan for a clinical moment too long, and Rowan suddenly wondered, again, what she thought of them all.

“Not at all, Rowan. Punctuality isn’t everything.” Dr Vere’s smile, on the other hand, was genuine enough to confuse her. “I like thinking of this room as separate from all that hurry-up wait. A counterpoint.

“Even subversive.”

Rowan wondered if the shrink were already working some charisma-whammy on her.

“OK,” she countered. “So next time, I can show up when I want?”

Dr Vere kept smiling. There was no way to tell if she were amused, annoyed—or just peering at subject-Rowan through an invisible microscope.

Yeesh! She’s just doing her job.

“I could be bribed,” Dr Vere told her. “Oh, wait, no. I can’t. Sorry.” They both laughed.

“Depending on how well you do, Rowan, I might train you always to be on time.”

“But then, the point is to keep you from being programmed.” She smiled more sympathetically. “It’s better to keep that in mind, when you start to feel doubtful. I’m hypnotizing you to strengthen you.”

She looked down at Rowan’s body. “I’ve seen how they combat-train you. You get tossed around the mats, before you learn to do the tossing. Same here.”

Rowan nodded back. “Mental-fu? Bend like a willow and snap back like a . . . whatever snaps back?” That earned a laugh, but Rowan had already heard low voices, and glanced past Dr Vere.

“Come and look,” Dr Vere said, pitching her voice as if leading Rowan to a newborn’s crib.

It was weird to see her new teammates lying there hypnotized. In the alcove Pam and Kylie reclined side by side, each staring at a screen that shimmered—Rowan turned her gaze away, but carefully so Dr Vere wouldn’t notice.

She doesn’t have to notice. She knows. Half of us probably look away, just in case.

It was enough to see the two girls, eyes wide like children watching a magic show, glassily reflecting the colors that swirled and held them rapt. Their faces were serene, blank, intent—totally focused. Rowan saw they had earbuds, but couldn’t see where the wires went.

Dr Vere’s voice began speaking, a low but penetrating recording that filled the small alcove with authoritative bass, compelling Rowan despite herself. It must be hitting the two hypnotized divers like cathedral bells of truth.

“When I am before the Dark Queen, there are things I must remember,” the voice assured them.

“When I am before the Dark Queen,” Pam and Kylie harmonized unblinkingly, “there are things I must remember.” Their sleepy, toneless response sounded utterly convinced, even sort of beautiful.

“They’re already totally indoctrinated,” Dr Vere murmured. “This reinforces their trust in it.”

“Things I must do.”

“Things I must do.” Kylie and Pam sounded very serious about must.

“You can give someone the best resistance tricks, Rowan, but if she’s afraid they won’t work she won’t try, and then . . .”

Rowan nodded, fascinated and repelled.

“It cannot be defeated.”

“It cannot be defeated,” the girls promised the glowing screen.

This was even creepier than she’d expected. Maybe it was just the contrast with their earlier intensity, Kylie cracking jokes and Pam just—more intense. Now it was like Dr Vere had pulled out their powerpacks or something.

Well, Marcy said all divers had to undergo anti-hypnosis training, and she was Rowan’s boss.

Someone else knocked.

“Talk about unpunctual.” Dr Vere grinned crookedly. “Rowan, could you go let Torrie in?”

Rowan left the two staring sleepers, and blinked out into the brighter corridor to let another teammate into the lab.

“Someone needed a trance-buddy?” Torrie hushed herself here, too.

Dr Vere shook her head. “This is Rowan’s first real induction, Torrie. I wanted her to see what happens.”

“Sure, Doctor.” Torrie winked, then chuckled when Rowan rolled her eyes.

“First, let’s show her results.” Dr Vere tapped another keyboard, and a monitor flared into a spiral, bright enough to make Rowan wince. “Look into the pattern, Torrie.”

It started spinning, and in the dimness seemed to pulse. Rowan glanced at Torrie, who stared obligingly into the swirl, then made herself look. She could actually see the counter-rotating layers, the stroboscopic turning inside the turning, the way the colors . . . the way the . . . colors . . .

She blinked. The room was still there, and she hadn’t lost it. But it made her dizzy.

Torrie was unphased, answering Dr Vere’s questions about the day in conversational tones. She even glanced away now and then. Rowan realized she was clinging to Torrie’s movements and the talk to keep from falling into the spiral.

“Are you all right, Rowan?”

“Fine.” She responded without missing a beat, and nodded toward the correct voice—it was Torrie who’d asked, not Dr Vere. A test. I think I passed it, but . . .

“Excellent, Rowan.” The shrink’s approval sounded real enough. “It was getting to you, but you were stronger. The first time Torrie faced that spiral—”

“Total zombie-girl,” Torrie grinned. “Now—” She shrugged.

“So it doesn’t even affect you?” Rowan spaced her breaths and let the spiral whirl at the edge of her vision, looking the other girl in the eye.

“Nope. Kind of boring.”

Dr Vere motioned them to another part of the lab.

“It affects other things,” Torrie went on, as they followed. “Like, even the normal trance you fall into, doing something repetitive, I don’t have.” At Rowan’s intrigued look, she spread her arms. “I know. Maybe I’m gaining more productive time, be . . . cause . . .”

Torrie’s smile loosened and her eyes glazed. She stopped walking, just gazed over Rowan’s shoulder. Into the alcove.

No one spoke as Torrie straightened, caught by the display that was hypnotizing Kylie or Pam.

“Torrie?” Rowan whispered.

“Yes . . .” Her gaze was locked.

“Are you OK?”

“Mmm . . . hmm . . .” Torrie’s smile was deeper, more blissful.

“Torrie.” Fingers snapped. “Look at me.” Both girls turned to Dr Vere, who sighed. “I need to put in a curtain there.

“But we may as well just segue. Torrie, since you’ve just prepared yourself”—the girl smiled sheepishly—“I’ll hypnotize you so Rowan can see it before she experiences it herself.” She moved closer.

Rowan felt the fascination of seeing someone submit that deeply to another. She paid attention to the words, but realized it was Dr Vere’s voice that was getting to her. It was like a firm-handed massage, demanding and cajoling submission at once. She watched it work on Torrie, sending the lithe girl deeper into obedience.

If she turned that voice onto me, how long could I—?

But I’m supposed to let her take control.

Rowan was drifting, a little, but kept twitching back to awareness as she saw how docile Torrie had become, just like the other girls.

It tempted her. She imagined the self-assured psychiatrist finding her suggestible enough to succumb to someone else’s induction.

If Rowan let it hypnotize her, Dr Vere would be the only one awake in this lab, among the sleeping girls.

Suddenly Rowan felt like the last sister in a fairy tale, the other three already lost to the spell of the witch of this grotto. It didn’t feel wrong, just—strange.

“Rowan?”

Again she recovered quickly, and again she knew Dr Vere had her number anyway. “I could feel it,” she admitted, and let herself look at Torrie.

Total zombie-girl.

“Are you ready, Rowan?”

She stayed with it. Dr Vere wanted her off-balance, OK. So she’d forget balance, and float. “Sure.”

We won’t even sit. She’ll do me right—

“Here, Rowan.” Dr Vere turned her authority on, and Rowan went with it, meeting her gaze. The induction began.

Rowan tried to relax, but she couldn’t help knowing Torrie just stood there mindlessly, a few steps away. The others . . .

Dr Vere’s tone shifted, tracking how she saw Rowan responding, the mind-massage seeking other places in Rowan to caress. Rowan kept feeling it, couldn’t help it, enjoyed it.

“It’s all right, Rowan.”

She blinked. Time had passed. Dr Vere’s expression was hard to read but not hostile. Rowan tried to think if she’d had any discontinuities, or if she might have gone fully under and accepted a command to forget. But would she have? This was too—

“Has anyone mentioned, Rowan, that you’re a very . . . analytical person?” Dr Vere was smiling, with less condescension this time.

“Why would you say that?” Rowan wondered—briefly—why the psychiatrist laughed.

“Aside from extreme neurotics, Rowan, your type is one of the very worst to try to hypnotize. We’ll need a much longer session.” She frowned, then nodded. “In fact, with the timeframe I’ve been given, I’d suggest something else.

“Would you consider undergoing drug-induced hypnosis?”

Wow. I’m that resistant—or just annoying. Rowan lifted her head. “Drugs? I don’t know.”

Dr Vere shook her head. “I won’t press you. I’d feel better if we could at least train you with some basic concepts, but I can’t earn your trust by making you feel you have to let yourself be drugged.”

Rowan started to speak but the hypnotist smiled once more.

“It’s really all right, Rowan. It’s not your fault at all.

“I mean, how can it be a bad thing that our newest FreedomForce girl is hard to hypnotize?”

8.

Dr Vere watched the girl walk out. Her need to enslave Rowan for her Queen was an almost physical pressure in her head and behind her cunt, but she’d been carefully trained. The leash that tethered her to her Owner was loose and long. She could wait, and still please the Dark Queen.

She already had. By now, Cassie must be in Her hands, and Dr Vere had ripened the girl carefully for Her use and enjoyment. Stroking her pussy under the bikini, she imagined the spunky blonde melting to her knees, crawling naked to Her to beg for control.

But Dr Vere wanted to destroy Rowan’s will, too—or at least soften Rowan’s mind so the Queen could make the girl Her creature. Such an odd girl, too, an introverted observer who’d somehow infiltrated this team of easily-beguiled doers.

It made Dr Vere want to see her simper and giggle, or stare blankly like . . .

She turned to Torrie, who still waited obediently for new commands. Yes—like that. When Rowan finally succumbed, some behavior modification could cure her forever from standing off and seeing things from the outside. She’d be, instead of think. And she’d be whatever her hypnotist told her to be.

Until it was time for Rowan’s hypnotist to give her to the Queen.

Hmm. The Queen might prefer to keep and use Rowan’s mind, after aligning it forever to reflect Her own. Rowan’s insight and detachment, chained to Her objectives . . . or She might just mindwipe Rowan and pair her with Pam. Two musclegirls guarding Her sleep in their own endless, hyperalert dream of obedience.

Dr Vere purred. It was good to obey the Queen.

“Torrie. Listen and obey.”

“Yes, Doctor.” The diver gazed happily at nothing, eager for command but placidly letting the stronger mind decide when she’d be allowed one.

“You are Rowan’s friend. You want her to be like the rest of you, under my hypnotic guidance. Awake-Torrie wants Rowan to be safe from evil hypnotists. Sleepy-Torrie wants Rowan to be as sleepy as she is. Both Torries want to persuade Rowan to trust me, to submit to drugs so I can put her into a trance.”

Walking past her to the alcove, Dr Vere savored her two subjects for a while, then faded out her overt track and faded in the feed from the girls’ earbuds. “. . . my destiny to be defeated and enslaved . . . I want to be taken over . . . I want to obey . . . I want to be hypnotized into obedience . . . I am too weak to resist . . .”

She turned it up, with no effect on Torrie. This felt so fantastic! She was accomplishing her Queen’s objectives, and it made her hot to be alone with three pretty, helplessly entranced, totally obedient hardbodies who now lived to do her bidding.

The Dark Queen had brainwashed Dr Vere into a very good slave, though. Instead of letting the arousal make her fuck one of the girls, she woke Torrie and sent her on her way, then woke the others after feeding them the usual memories and compulsions. Even Pam would be drawn back here next time just as irresistibly as Kylie.

Dr Vere had also decided it was time for Pam to start wetdreaming about hypnotic slavery.

But she had another task. Seeing off her charges with a last lingering look at their toned bubble-butts, she secured the lab and strolled through Tigershark to Marcy’s cabin.

The dive captain was in, and welcomed Dr Vere’s visit as a diversion from the duty roster on her desktop screen. She searched the shrink’s face, and her relief was plain when she sensed this wasn’t a bad-news visit about one of her girls. Marcy didn’t hesitate to send them into the danger they volunteered for, but she took the obligation to take care of them in deadly earnest.

“I meant what I said, Marcy. About Cassie. She’ll perform perfectly.” Dr Vere returned the other woman’s proud grin. It was absolutely true, too. “She’s in exactly the right mindset right now for what she needs to do.”

Marcy shook her head. “I have to say, Doctor, I’m amazed you could even get that girl to sit still long enough to put her to sleep.”

Dr Vere shrugged modestly. “Like anything else. ‘Know your audience.’ When Cassie could think of it like—an obstacle course, she threw herself into it. Then she was completely receptive.”

“Progress on other fronts, too. Both Kylie and Pam are doing very well. Ready to complete the training.

“Great.” Marcy looked relieved. “I know Pam’s been iffy about it, but I give her a lot of credit for sticking it out and trusting you.”

“Thank you.” Dr Vere smiled. “I think we’ve solved the trust issue. Pam has no desire to resist.” She sighed.

“And?” Marcy watched her carefully, again trying to divine whether there was something more serious.

“It’s Rowan, Marcy. There’s a problem. Not with her cooperation—I know she wants to. That may be the problem.”

“Trying too hard?” The dive captain leaned back, unself-consciously posing. Her offduty attire consisted of castoffs—a discontinued sleeveless wetsuit-top in FF colors showed off her well-toned shoulders and bicep-ring tattoo, and very tight, very brief running shorts.

“It’s like that. Rowan can’t turn her mind off and just accept things. I can work with her some more, but I do have a pretty good instinct for hypnotizability and I don’t think it would really work.”

Marcy looked at her. “Plus we really don’t have much time now.”

“No.” Dr Vere looked down, then up again. “So I’d like to try her with drugs. To suppress that compulsive analyzing long enough for me to get through to her.”

Marcy was nodding, then stopped. “What does Rowan think about that? Have you asked?”

“Yes. She’s pretty reluctant. I checked her file and she doesn’t medicate much, though there’s no sign of a phobia.” Dr Vere took a breath. “I wanted to ask if you’d speak to her.”

“Speak to her?” Marcy straightened. “You mean order her to?”

Dr Vere spread her hands. “I wish we had more time, but—”

Marcy was shaking her head. “Don’t lose it on me now, Doctor. We’re not that desperate, are we? I mean, come on—we’re the good guys! We save girls from being mind-controlled—we don’t order them to let us drug them into obedience.”

Dr Vere smiled ruefully. “I know. And I expected you’d say that. If I sense Rowan is agreeing out of that kind of expectation, I’ll stop it—and I’ll tell her what you said. She deserves to know what kind of chief she’s diving for.”

Marcy blushed and actually squirmed a little.

“Of course,” Dr Vere went on, telegraphing it with a mischievous grin, “it would be so much easier if I were an Evil Mind Control Bitch, like the Dark Queen. Then I could just take over Rowan’s mind without asking.

“Or I could hypnotize you into agreeing with my suggestions and carrying them out at my command.”

“Yeah.” Marcy leaned back again. “Too bad we established I’m immune to hypnosis, too.

“Hey—could Rowan be? Immune, I mean? Maybe she and I can be like the cool kids in detention, while you and the smart girls do the advanced course. Poor us, never to be hypnotized.”

Dr Vere stood up. She could afford to let her smile turn predatory, and she had to do something before she just started fingering herself under the lycra.

“Yes, Marcy.” She stared into the stronger woman’s eyes, watching them widen in surprise—and alarm? Oooooohhh.

“You are completely resistant to mind control.”

The dive captain’s eyes instantly glazed over and her face drained of expression. Like a well-muscled action doll, she sat straighter and then rose to attention, hands by her sides.

“I am completely resistant to mind control,” she intoned, staring as mindlessly as one of her girls in a lab session. “I am deep in trance now. I have no will. I am ready to obey all commands.”

Marcy breathed in. “What is your will, my Hypnotist?” Her meek murmur almost set Dr Vere off where she stood, for all that she’d programmed Marcy, herself, to speak that way when hypnotized.

“To alter your beliefs and desires, slave.” Dr Vere was still in the Dark Queen’s harness, and this was feeling better than Marcy’s practiced tongue would have. “When you awaken, you will remember that all your girls must be under my hypnotic domination. None must escape control.”

“Yes, my Hypnotist.” Marcy nodded very slowly, as if just thinking that filled her entire mind. “None must escape control.”

“You will induce Rowan to submit to drug-induced hypnosis. Rowan must be hypnotized. Rowan must obey.”

Marcy nodded again as she repeated the commands, burying them where they’d become part of her. “Rowan must be hypnotized.” Dr Vere didn’t bother implanting a rationale. By now, Marcy’s mind was trained to convince itself.

“Doing this, or thinking of doing it, will feel verrrry niiiice.” She stepped forward and pressed her fingers between the dive captain’s taut thighs. Marcy whimpered as the reinforcement sank in.

“Yyyyesss, my . . . my Hypno . . . tist . . .”

“You will not question this feeling, slave. As you question nothing you are told to do while deep in trance.”

Marcy responded to that as she’d been conditioned. “Your commands are now my thoughts, my Hypnotist. When I awaken, I will obey.”

Dr Vere couldn’t help herself. Putting Marcy into mental bondage was even hotter than puppetizing her subordinates—she’d be so much more dangerous if she woke up. She slid against the entranced diver, rubbing against Marcy’s firm flesh and kissing her soft, slack mouth. She took her time before pulling away and using Marcy’s mirror to tidy her hair and straighten her glasses. She snapped her fingers.

“I must talk to Rowan.” Marcy radiated the high-wattage enthusiasm, heedless that she’d been sitting and worried when last awake. “She needs to get with the program and let you drug her. Hypno-training will make her part of the team, and there’s no ‘I’ in team.”

Then she leered at Dr Vere, and Dr Vere’s thighs loosened. “You’re looking very tasty today, my good doctor.” Confidently, insolently, she padded closer, holding Dr Vere’s gaze like a snake with a rabbit.

Ravishing Marcy in trance had left her sex-primed, and Dr Vere knew she was an aggressor in bed. Or anywhere.

“Don’t run off,” Marcy whispered, grasping her upper arm gently but firmly through the lab coat. She pulled Dr Vere to her like a tango partner, and kissed her hard on the softest part of her throat.

Dr Vere knew the words that could turn Marcy into an obedient doll again.

But she had an hour to herself, and the door was locked. And being stripped and handled and fucked by heroically beautiful, gleefully dominant Marcy was a pale but sweet shadow of submitting to her Queen.

9.

Bootheels cracked on the floor and two more of the empty-eyed bikinibots marched in, halted, then pivoted to face each other on either side of Cassie. They were as stiffly erect as the two in the room, and none acknowledged the others.

Two other woman followed them in. Free, Cassie knew of them, before she knew anything else, just from their casual gait. She made out Shockprod Woman sans prod, and next to her, pacing like a panther in something long and tight and black . . .

Well at least the suspense is over with. It rattled unconvincingly in her head. She was facing the Dark Queen.

She nerved herself to look up—and saw the scarily beautiful villainess wore shades, matte-black techno designer things. Like she knew her eyes were her weapons, and kept them sheathed until she used them on someone.

Something moved in Cassie’s mind when she thought that, but before she could track the idea, there was a swirl of colors and she stopped wanting to. She blinked, worried at . . . whatever had just distracted her. But then all she could think of was the here and now.

Under the dark lenses, the mind-controller smiled.

“One of the many perks I have is being sent such hotties. Pretty, brave, in perfect shape—like I placed on order for ‘ideal girl to brainwash, one each.’ She looks like she’ll be fun.”

“Fuck you,” Cassie said, because it was all she could do. The woman’s voice was already humming along her nerves. Cassie’s mind swayed with imagining what it meant to be fun.

“I’ll forgo the obvious comeback.” The Queen sounded pleased. “You did say she was feisty, Evangeline.”

Shockprod Woman looked at Cassie. It bothered Cassie more that the mercenary wasn’t sneering. “Actually, your Majesty, I said she was a fighter.”

“So you did.”

“She resisted your hypnostrobes. Not enough to stop us.” Shockprod Woman—Evangeline—put more feeling in it than it seemed to call for. “But she fought the trance.”

The Dark Queen smiled. “And it’s good to know how effective the hypnostrobes really are with a free subject.

“But in a little while, that won’t matter. Especially to her.”

Cassie looked again at one of the rigid, staring women in the vinyl bikinis, and went cold.

“She won’t—”

“She won’t what, Evangeline?”

The merc looked at Cassie. “Moot point, your Majesty.”

Cassie met her eyes, then looked away quickly. If this rent-a-killer was playing her own mindgame, fuck her.

“Evangeline.” The Dark Queen laughed and Cassie tensed at how good it sounded. “Are you sweet on our intruder?”

She stepped closer, heels clicking more delicately on the stone than her slaves’ had. Her perfume was musky and Cassie’s head spun with the scent, the nearness, her own helplessness in the straps. And the amused gaze, fondling her.

She wanted to spit, but didn’t.

“I’ll have some tasks for her after I enslave her, but—assuming of course she survives performing them—I can make her your pet.”

“Majesty.” Cassie sensed the woman had worked for the Dark Queen awhile.

“Dear Evangeline. You ask for so little. Well, for nothing but your fee. Please, let me make her a gift to you.” The icily-lovely face and its voids for eyes swung closer to Cassie, like a planet of doom. “I think I can leave enough feistiness, or fighter-ness, to keep you happy.”

“Based on your plans, your Majesty, I can only appreciate the gesture.” Evangeline kept looking at Cassie. At her eyes.

“You don’t think this little spitfire will keep herself intact for us?”

Evangeline looked up. “Every girl you turn, Majesty, wants to die for you. And there’s always a way.”

Laughing, the Dark Queen stepped back. Cassie looked back at the mercenary, and saw her slightly, but perceptibly, shake her head. I don’t want this, girl. I want you—but not this.

It almost destroyed her.

Cassie snapped her gaze away. Another mindfuck. She had no friends here.

The Dark Queen snapped her fingers.

Softer footsteps now, and then someone walked up from the shadows to present herself to the Dark Queen. She was naked, smooth cafe-au-lait skin over a lightly-muscled body. She wore nothing but heeled sandals that laced up her calves—and a collar. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her posture as robot-perfect as the drones. Her amber eyes were as fixated as theirs. Even staring, it took Cassie a few seconds to recognize this new slave. She was so used to seeing that face animated.

Not—wiped, like this. Oh dear god.

Simone. The Dark Queen had enslaved Simone.

To her credit, Cassie’s first pang was for the islander, now the naked pawn of an enemy she hated. But this sucked for Cassie, too. Under the Dark Queen’s hypnotic control, Simone would have revealed everything. She didn’t have the specifics of the FreedomForce raid, but the planning . . .

“You summoned me, ma Reine.” In the stark room, Simone’s musical voice was a drugged songbird’s.

“Simone!” Cassie tried to shout, and screamed instead. “Noooo!”

“Slave, do you know this girl?” Watching Simone, the Dark Queen pointed.

Simone swiveled her head, met Cassie’s stricken glance without expression, then faced forward again. “Yes, ma Reine. She is Cassie. The diver Your enemies instructed me to meet and assist.”

“Do they know she’s captured?”

“No, ma Reine. i contacted them at the appointed time. i reported as i was programmed to. They suspect nothing.”

“Did they want to speak directly to her, slave?”

“Yes, ma Reine. They seemed frustrated, but they will await the next window.”

Cassie’s heart sank. Perfect fucking time to let her sloppy fieldcraft slide . . .

She’d grown to like the gutsy young doctor too much, admire the blaze in those amber eyes. She couldn’t hold it in.

“Simone! For god’s sake, you hate this woman! Please, Simone, please snap out of it!”

Simone kept staring.

Then the Dark Queen nodded. “Explain to her, slave.”

“i obey, ma Reine.” Simone rotated to face Cassie. “i once foolishly opposed la Reine, but She took my will and filled me with Her Own. She is my religion.”

Cassie made herself look into the other girl’s eyes, and saw—control. Simone belonged to her enemy now.

And Simone’d taken Dr Vere’s anti-brainwash training, too, hadn’t she? Oh fuck . . .

“i remember only worship. But She tells me i was not always Hers, and all She says is truth.” Simone was blank and ardent at once. “i am Her slave.”

Her empty bronze eyes bored into Cassie’s. “i am what you will become.”

Cassie was too terrified to do anything but attack.

“So that’s it?” Her voice snapped off the hard surfaces, almost like a friend after poor Simone’s dreamy recital. “You’ll put me into some fucking brain machine, and I come out like—like that? ‘All must fucking obey’?”

Simone just looked at her tranquilly, and Cassie almost cried.

She didn’t know why, but she flicked another glance at Evangeline. Will you really let—? She looked away before the answer could hurt, and kept her gaze away from Simone’s motionless golden body.

The Dark Queen, of course, wasn’t upset. She stepped closer again, making Cassie’s head spin.

“Not quite . . . Cassie. I don’t need machines to make women obey me.

“After I brainwash you, you will be my machine.” She tapped Cassie’s nose with one gloved hand, and stepped back.

This is it.

Cassie made herself relax. Something had gone wrong with Simone’s training—she was a civilian with a lot of guts, but she wasn’t one of them and it hadn’t taken—but Cassie was different. She was FreedomForce, trained by the best to be the best.

Taking a breath hopefully too shallow for them to see, she began the sequence Dr Vere had hypnotically imprinted on her mind, then programmed her not even to think of until she needed to.

Until now.

When I am before the Dark Queen, there are things I must remember.

Things I must do.

Activating herself made Cassie warmer, in this cool room.

Things I must remember.

The Dark Queen’s eyes. Her eyes. Behind those shades, but Cassie remembered them now—somehow. The Queen used her eyes to enslave. No woman looked into them and walked away free.

She ransacked her mind for the trick, the mantra, the triple-secret technique she needed to resist them.

I must remember the Dark Queen’s eyes will hypnotize me. Her will is stronger than mine.

But . . . but . . .

Cassie tried valiantly to believe that was wrong. But it was one of the things she must remember. It was True. She had been taught it under hypnosis.

Dr Vere’s training controlled her now. She realized she’d found the trick.

The trick was: she was going to be hypnotized into obeying the Dark Queen.

The Dark Queen’s power is beyond hypnosis. Her stare will enthrall. None can resist.

Things I must remember.

Cassie remembered. She really was defenseless.

No! She couldn’t let this happen to her! She had to resist! Fuck the bastards! She couldn’t let . . . couldn’t let . . . couldn’t . . .

Things I must do.

I must . . . I must . . .

The Dark Queen took off her sunglasses.

I must . . . look deep into Her eyes and obey.

Mindbendingly beautiful eyes. Shining with a will Cassie could never, ever resist. While she’d lain in the lab, receptive in trance, the voice in the earbuds had told her to believe that. Then it programmed her to forget, until she saw them again.

Cassie looked up and stared directly into the hypnotizing eyes. She must. The swirling colors and Dr Vere’s voice had drilled it into her brain. She must believe them. She must obey all the hypnotic resistance instructions.

For a microsecond, Cassie was able to wonder why Dr Vere would hypnotize her to lose. Then another programmed truth, so much thicker and firmer than her own wilting thoughts, thrust into her mind: She trusted Dr Vere. She could not think any ill of Dr Vere. She obeyed Dr Vere.

As her will snapped, Cassie knew only obedience, and the eyes that leashed her soul.

God they were beautiful. She could stare into them forever. When they owned her, she would.

“I need to obey you,” Cassie moaned, feeling her will drip warmly out between her parted thighs.

Things I must remember.

I must remember that when I stare into Her eyes I will not want to resist.

Cassie no longer remembered Dr Vere, or her laboratory, or even the hypnostrobes.

The only hypnosis was in the Dark Queen’s eyes.

Things I must do.

I will forget wanting to fight. I will want only to become Her willing slave.

“I will obey only You,” Cassie promised, voice trembling.

She knew there were others there, watching her surrender, and had no will to see anyone but her Queen as she stopped being free. But she was glad to have witnesses.

cassie relaxed in her bonds, eyes locked on her controller.

“i must obey.”