6 comments/ 12754 views/ 12 favorites A Question of Time, Ch. 01 By: JukeboxEMCSA Maggie wasn't thinking about anything. Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone. She was dancing, eyes closed, feeling the beat thrum through her body like a wave breaking over her, moving like a puppet on a string and loving every moment of it, feeling like a hand in a glove, a flash in the pan, a storm in a teacup, a needle in a haystack, a prize for the winning, a dead for the raising, a catch for the chasing, a jewel for the choosing, a man for the making in this blistering heat... Then someone touched her shoulder. "Hammering In My Head" continued to play, telling her to sweat it all out, but the moment was lost. She turned around to look at the stranger behind her. He was older than she was--perhaps late thirties, perhaps late forties, but it was difficult to be sure. His face had a timeless quality about it, like a rock that had withstood the harshness of wind and water so long that it had been worn down to its elemental qualities. He was dressed simply; a t-shirt and jeans, with a black leather jacket over the ensemble. The only touches of individuality came from the cowboy boots he wore, and the matching hat. She might have thought "Village People", except that he had an air of command that almost seemed menacing. She couldn't have imagined laughing at him. She couldn't have imagined doing anything at that moment except staring at him. Despite the heat of her dancing, despite the crowded warmth of the club, she felt her arms run cold with goose bumps. He stepped closer to her. "You're in grave danger," he said, his voice rough like sandpaper. "You have to trust me implicitly, or you'll never make it out of here." Maggie blinked. The words didn't seem real. Nobody ever really said that to anybody. It was just something that happened in Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and bad detective novels starring Mike Hammer. She wasn't in any danger. She was a data processor for a check recovery firm. Nobody cared about her enough to want to kill her. This whole thing was crazy. She just had to explain that to this...whoever, and then he'd go away. The thought crossed her mind for a moment that he might be crazy, but she was in a public place, surrounded by people. He wouldn't try anything here, even if he was insane. She opened her mouth to tell him that, but before she could get out the first word, he pressed a finger to her lips. "Don't look around," he said. "Look at my wristwatch; I've angled it so you can see him in the reflection." Maggie looked down at the wristwatch. The reflection of the nightclub's harsh spotlights caught her eye for a moment, blinding her, but then he moved his wrist ever so slightly, and she saw him. "Frank?" she said. "I know him from work. I didn't know he went to this club." She started to turn, but he grabbed her chin and forced her to face him. "I told you not to look around. If you don't listen to me and do everything I say when I say it, you don't stand a chance of escaping him. You think it's a coincidence that he's here? He's come here to take you. I would have come sooner, but I wasn't sure you were his target until tonight." "Take me? What are you talking about?" The man's eyes narrowed. "That man, the one you call Frank. He's a slaver. The data processing job is a cover for his real work--he procures women for the wealthy and unscrupulous, people who want trophy wives or sex slaves or...other things..." She didn't like the sound of 'other things'... "and you fit all the parameters. You're young and pretty; you have no family, no close friends, nobody who'd make serious inquiries if you were to vanish. And, of course, there's the stories." The goose bumps covered her body now, and she felt a pit open up in her stomach. This wasn't real, please, let it not be real... "Wh-what stories?" she asked, trying to sound confident. The man flashed anger. "Don't be an idiot, girl," he said. "You're in enough danger. Don't make it worse for yourself by trying to lie. I know that for the past three years you've been a member of seven different mailing lists, all with an interest in the same sexual fetish--mind control. You've visited mind-control fetish websites on a weekly basis for the past five years, and you've contributed three stories yourself, all under the pseudonym 'Skydiver'. Your particular fetish involves being made over into a mindless sex slave. Did you really think that you could be that public about it without drawing some attention?" "I...how...how?" The words wouldn't come anymore. There was just fear now, choking and sickly, wrapping itself around her throat and tightening. "Profiling. Some of the people on those mailing lists are professional slavers on the lookout for new victims. There are hidden programs in those websites that send a cookie back to them. They keep track of the people who visit, and use it as the starting point for their captures... you won't be able to resist them. Part of you already wants what they're offering. It's like a crack in your armor, and they'll take full advantage of it. They'll take you, remake your mind in their image, and sell you off as a blowjob machine in the Far East or somewhere. And you'll love it. Unless you come with me, right now." Maggie felt like she was drowning. None of it made sense, and yet...and yet...she clung to the stranger like a life preserver. "Alright," she said. She tried not to think about the idea of her as a mindless sex doll. It wasn't fair, dammit! She didn't want that, not really, but it wasn't her fault that the idea got her hot... "Where are we going?" "Mexico," he responded, taking her by the hand and dragging her through the crowd. "If we can make you vanish, completely and totally, there's a chance that they might not be able to find you again. Either way, though, girl...your life as you know it is over." They burst out of the club into the relatively fresh air outside, but Maggie still felt like she couldn't breathe. Her knees felt weak and ragged, and it seemed as though the ground was bucking beneath her as they walked. Nothing felt solid anymore, nothing seemed stable. "Who are you?" she asked, desperate for some point of contact with the man who was saving her from...her mind shied away from the concept. "Call me Burke," he said, heading to a BMW infiniti that was parked across three spaces. He unlocked the doors and ushered her in, then got in himself. "We'll need to make a few stops first." "My apartment?" she asked, thinking clothes, checkbook, towel, the stuffed bear she'd had since she was six that was her last reminder of her father, her CDs, one last chance to see her life spread out around her... "No," he said with an icy finality. "They'll have it watched." He was driving far faster than she was comfortable with, but he maneuvered the car with an easy confidence. "If you go home, you won't get the chance to leave again. We need to stop at an ATM, and a pay phone." He pulled into a gas station. "Give me your bank card and PIN number; I'm going to go withdraw all your cash." She blinked. The instincts of the urban jungle told her that she should never give either one of those away, let alone both, but she found herself reaching into her purse for them without a moment's thought. "Why can't I do it?" she asked. "Because you're going to call your job and tell them you quit, and it'll save time if I withdraw the money while you do that." He took the outstretched card, and opened the door. "Make it a good performance," he said. "They won't question it if you get really pissed off at them." ***** They were on the interstate now, driving south at 95 miles an hour. Burke had said that he hoped to be in Mexico in two days. He'd given her credit cards away to a couple of unsavory men and told them to go have fun. Apparently, if they were charging things on her card and leaving a paper trail, while she spent only cash, it'd help to confuse Frank and his friends. (Frank had told her to have a nice night. He'd been wearing a San Diego Chargers sweatshirt. White slavers weren't supposed to like the Chargers, were they?) It had all been too much, too fast. From "It Girl" to fugitive in thirty minutes flat, fleeing south with a strange man in a strange car and no change of clothes and the $2000 that was all the money she had in the world now, everything she had in existence now, and it just didn't make sense and all she wanted to do was curl up into a little ball and pretend none of it, none of it had happened. She was still dancing, she thought. Still in the nightclub, still listening to the music and remembering what it felt like to be complete for once in her life... A question popped into her head, and without thinking, she asked it. "How did you know that I was their target?" For a long time, Burke didn't respond. "Frank," he said at last. His voice wasn't the same tone of icy command that she'd already gotten used to. It seemed almost...vulnerable. "I've known who he was...what he was...for a long time. Tried to keep as many people as possible away from him, and his kind." He sighed, and for a moment she felt immeasurably close to him. "It hasn't always worked." "But if you know, why don't you...I don't know, go to the cops?" The tone of impatient condescension was back, like it had never left. "I thought you read all the stories, girl," he snapped. "They're untouchable. Any cop who goes to investigate comes back saying that the claims are totally groundless--and if they're young and pretty, then they quit the force a week later and start working as a porn star for some producer who knows the right people. You can't fight them...if you try, they'll just make you into a slave and that's the end of it." Maggie shuddered. It was like she'd dropped off the ends of the earth. They owned the cops, they owned the law, they knew where she lived, and they were after her...and she couldn't fight them. All she could do was run. (Once again, she ignored the tiny little voice that asked, "Why run?" It wasn't her fault that the voice was there. It wasn't her fault that there was some little part of her that got off on the concept. It wasn't her fault.) Burke had turned on the car stereo, apparently assuming that the conversation was over. Depeche Mode blasted out 'Master And Servant' as they whipped past a road sign that said, 'Speed Limit - 70.' Suddenly, Maggie pictured them being pulled over by a cop with a blank, vacant stare and the fear squeezed at her chest again. "Shouldn't we slow down?" she asked. "I mean, they could...send the cops after us, couldn't they? Catch us, and..." she shied away from the concept again, and her brain found refuge in another question. "Burke, how come they've never gotten to you?" Burke spoke to her without looking at her, making his voice heard over the car stereo. "Get some sleep," he said. "You don't know when you'll need it." There was no way she could sleep, she thought, as she listened to the pulsing bass of the music through the car speakers. She'd never be able to sleep again, not with the music so loud, and the situation so crazy, and the seats so comfy... Maggie drifted off at 95 miles an hour, heading south towards Mexico. TO BE CONTINUED... A Question of Time, Ch. 02 Maggie wasn't thinking about anything. Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone. She was lost in a pleasant, dreamless oblivion, and the one slim part of her consciousness that remained was the part that was aware of just how nice it all felt, not to think, just to feel the soft sheets, the pillow under her head, and just wanted to stay like this forever... Then Burke touched her on the shoulder, and after a moment of gentle shaking, she woke up. The sunlight streamed through the blinds on the motel window onto the wall just over her head, and she realized it must already be late in the day. She looked down at her watch to see what time it was, and seeing the reflection of Burke in the watch brought back all the memories of yesterday's strange, crazy, utterly mad day, and a sudden, gripping terror clutched at her heart as she turned over to look at him. "We've got problems," he said before she could get out a single word. The questions in her mind-how did she get in here, why had he let her sleep so long, why hadn't he ever answered her question that she asked before she fell asleep-all of them fluttered out of her head at the tone of urgency in his voice. "What problems?" she asked, her voice still full of sleep. Burke went to the window. He lifted aside the blinds for just a moment, long enough to peek out, and said, "I don't think we got away clean." He went back over to the bed. "I went out a few minutes ago, to buy supplies, and I spotted one of their scouts. He didn't spot me...at least, I don't think he did...but they must know that I'm taking you away from them." He went back over to the windows, and peered out through the blinds again. "Worse, they must have figured out that I'd be taking you south. They might have people all up and down the routes into Mexico." Like a tiger in a cage, he stalked the same route back to the bed and looked down at her. "We're going to have to be a lot more careful from now on." Maggie asked, "Why not just try going somewhere else? Like, I dunno, Canada?" "Because we're not dodging the draft," he said impatiently. "We're hiding out from mind-control slavers. We need someplace with a low technology level and an under-organized bureaucracy, and Canada doesn't fit the bill. To be frank, I'm not sure if even Mexico is going to be uncivilized enough-we might have to move you further south, into Central America." Part of Maggie wanted to ask what would happen if she didn't want to live the rest of her life in Central America, but by now, she knew better than to question something like that. Burke was just trying to save her mind, and he knew more about this than she did. If he said Central America, then she'd just need to learn how to speak Spanish. "Then what do we do?" "For now, we wait. I don't want to travel by day if we can possibly avoid it. That means we're stuck here for a few hours, until the sun goes down." Maggie nodded. "So what do we do until then?" As she sat on the bed, still wearing last night's sweat-soaked clothes from the club, she realized what the question sounded like, and she blushed. "I mean-um, well, do you have food?" She hadn't realized it until a moment ago, but she was starving. He went over to the door, and grabbed some sandwiches from a large grocery bag-undoubtedly the supplies he'd went to get earlier. "Here. Eat. When you're done, we're going to work on a little self-defense training." Maggie unwrapped her sandwich greedily. "I thought you said we couldn't fight them." "This isn't about fighting. It's about resistance." ***** "They'll try to separate us, if at all possible." Maggie was sitting on one of the motel's two dingy, understuffed chairs, the sandwich now resting comfortably in her stomach. "They know that they can't hypnotize me, so they'll try to distract me with a plausible-seeming threat. Perhaps a noise at the window, or a suspicious figure asking questions of the hotel manager. Something. In any event, it'll just be an excuse to get you alone." Burke was sitting across from her, in a chair that was identical to her own, apart from a stain here and there and a few lumps in the stuffing. He'd removed his hat, and had his eyes closed as though meditating. "Once they've got you alone, then they'll try to put you under as quickly as possible. Once they have you under their control, they can walk away with you easily. You'll go willingly into your new life as a sex slave." The sunlight was orange now, fading to red on the hotel walls, and they'd turned on the desk lamp just to give themselves enough light to see by. It cast odd shadows on the wall, but Maggie had her attention turned to Burke as he spoke. "I'm not expecting you to be able to fight them off. You can't. I've never known anyone to be able to offer them successful resistance. The only thing you need to be able to do is to hold them off until I get back. None of their distractions will last that long, so all you need to do is to resist for a little while, until I return. Do you understand?" Maggie nodded, before realizing that Burke's eyes were closed. She said, quietly, "Yes." Burke said, "Alright, then. We're going to work on resisting hypnosis, then, Maggie. I'm going to open my eyes in a second, and I want you to resist going into a hypnotic trance for as long as you possibly can. Are you ready?" "Yes." Burke opened his eyes and looked into her own. "You've already started out wrong, Maggie," he said in a calm, smooth, even tone. "You should have looked away before I could open my eyes. There's nothing in the rules, Maggie, that says you have to look into my eyes and try to resist. You could have gotten up, gotten out of the chair, closed your eyes, looked at the floor, but you looked into my eyes. That's going to make it much harder for you to resist, now." Maggie thought back to all the stories she'd read, about helpless women like her being taken by hypnotic men. How did they resist? She tried to drag her eyes away from his, but it was like...like they didn't want to move. It was so hard to move them, and so easy to let them stay locked onto Burke's... "Now that you've looked into my eyes, you're going to have to try to look away. Don't try too often, Maggie, since each effort will exhaust you, tire you out, drain away your will to resist, and so if you make an unsuccessful attempt, that will make it so much harder to resist me. Try to move the eyes first-it takes so much more effort to move your body, Maggie, that you'll probably find that it's already impossible to do so. If you try to move your body, and fail, then you'll be even more exhausted, Maggie." Maggie realized that she'd involuntarily tried to move, both her eyes and body, when he told her not to. Probably not what he had in mind, she thought distractedly as she gazed into his eyes. She felt so totally immobile in the chair now, and once again, she tried to think of how the heroines in her favorite stories fought off mind control. Idly, she became aware of a trickle of moisture between her thighs, and although she could barely move, she squirmed slightly in embarrassment. "If you can't move anymore, Maggie, then try to focus some of your attention away from me. Try to center your awareness in your feet, Maggie...or your legs...your thighs, resting on the chair...your back, resting against the chair...your arms, resting on the armrests..." It wasn't working, Maggie realized. Her point of focus was narrowing, not expanding. It was like all there was left to her body was just her head, gazing out through immobile eyes at Burke, who'd expanded to fill her entire world. She still knew she was aroused, and that the arousal was getting more intense by the moment, but it was a dreamlike arousal that didn't seem to break through the fog she was wrapped in. She felt her head tilt back to rest against the wall as though it were happening to someone else, because she just couldn't hold it up anymore. All her energy, all her attentions were just focused towards keeping her eyes open. As long as she could hold her eyes open, she wasn't in trance. But her eyes felt so heavy... She tried to think about those stories, those women, fighting their evil hypno-captors. Oh, she thought to herself, as her eyes slipped closed. They all lost, too... ***** Maggie felt a tap on her forehead, and she awakened. Burke was staring at her, an icy glare on his face. "Two minutes," he said, getting up to pace around the motel room. "That's how long you lasted, Maggie. Two minutes." Maggie blinked. She still felt foggy, disoriented. She dimly recalled scraps of the hypnotic experience, and part of her realized just how...how wonderful it was...but she was trying to focus on what Burke had said, now. "Is-is that good?" "Good?" The words exploded out of Burke's mouth in anger. "Good? I could go to the bathroom, Maggie, and you'd be gone when I came back." He spun around, headed back towards her, and she almost recoiled from the force of his anger. "It's not good, it's fucking useless. You're like a straw in the wind, Maggie. You're...you're..." he finally just spat out the word. "Weak." Maggie pressed herself away from him. "I tried," she said plaintively. "I did, really! It's just that...well..." she blushed. "It all felt so good." He grabbed her arm. "'It felt good'? Is there something you don't understand here, Maggie? If that had been anyone-anyone at all-besides me, you'd never have woken up. You'd have been reprogrammed into a mindless little hypno-slut, every trace of original thought would have been removed from your brain, and the words 'free will' wouldn't have even held any meaning for you anymore, and you're telling me that it's too hard for you to fight back because 'it felt good'?" He turned away. "Maybe I should just let them have you, if you so clearly want to be their little slut. If all you really care about is 'feeling good', then maybe you'd be better off as a slave." "No, please," Maggie said softly, amazed at the twitch in her groin at the thought. "I don't, really. I don't want to be a slave. I just...I can do better. Really, I can." Burke sat down heavily on the bed, and he stared down into his hands. "You'll have to, Maggie. You just don't understand. You don't understand how dangerous these people are. How easy it is for them to get to you." "Why do you?" Maggie asked, once again surprising herself with her own boldness. Burke's head shot up, and he glared at her. She almost wished she hadn't asked the question. But her mouth seemed to work independently of her brain now, as she said, "You said they couldn't hypnotize you. You knew Frank. You know about...all of this." She was already wilting under the force of his glare. "Please," she said. "Tell me why." Burke continued to glare at her for a long moment. "Because," he said, "I used to be one of them." TO BE CONTINUED... A Question of Time, Ch. 03 Maggie wasn't thinking about anything. Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone. She just listened to the soft, emotionless voice, and watched the landscape as it drifted past. She felt numb inside, detached from her surroundings...nothing felt real anymore, and although she heard the voice speaking to her, she didn't react at all. It was all just too big to take in. She'd trusted this man with her life, with her mind, with her soul, and to find this out... She couldn't think about it. Her mind veered away from the concept. She just listened to him as they drove, letting the words drift through her ears while trying not to let her mind think about their implications. "It started back in '82," Burke said. "I was a college student back then, but I wasn't a very good one. That wasn't due to any lack of intelligence on my part, you understand. I was very smart about a lot of things. Unfortunately, staying off drugs wasn't one of them. "I was connected to a lot of the right people on campus, and it was an easy step to move from using drugs to selling them. I made a hell of a living at it, and if my grades suffered, who cared? I made more in one night selling coke and speed to college students than most psych grads made in a week. I kept taking classes-there were a few things that interested me, mostly chemistry and a couple of psych courses-but for the most part, my days consisted of going from party to party, house to house, with baggies of weed and balls of hash and leaving with wallets full of money. "The chem classes were what got it all started, I guess. I was always looking for ways to increase the potency of the stuff I was selling. I'd find new stuff to cut the pure drugs with that was cheap, but that made the high more intense. Helped me stretch the pure stuff that much further, for that much more money. It wasn't the safest thing to do, but I wasn't trying the new drug out myself. I was giving it to some kid and watching him to see if his eyes bled or he puked up his guts." He paused. "I think you can probably tell by this point that I wasn't a very nice person by then. "Anyhow, one night in '85 I was at a frat party, mostly providing dope to frat boys, when I found a girl who wanted something a little stronger. I'd been working on a mix of cocaine and barbiturates, with some other stuff thrown in, so I gave her a shot. She sniffed it up, and then she sort of went...blank. Her eyes rolled back up into the back of her head, so that only the whites showed, and she just sat there, not moving. "I kinda freaked. Asked her if she was alright, if she could hear me. She said yes, but in this distant, vague tone. Like I was bypassing her brain. Funny, but seventeen years later, and I can still hear that voice in my head as clear as a bell. I'd taken some psych courses, like I said, and some of the hypnosis demonstrations had stuck with me, so I kind of had a clue as to what I'd stumbled into. I did some standard tests, had her raise her arms, forget her name, that kind of thing...after a few minutes, I was pretty sure that she was in a deep trance. "So I had sex with her. Nobody noticed-it was a frat party. A guy takes a girl to a room, she looks a little out of it, hey-who's not doing that? Afterwards, I tested some post-hyps... mostly that she wouldn't remember the sex, that she'd want more of the drug, that she'd tell any pretty friends she had about the stuff. "Then I went into prostitution. Nice little side business to my drug deals-just give the girl a dose of the blow, and suddenly, I've got a nice little sex kitten for the night. In the morning, they don't remember a thing-sure, they wonder why they're sore, and maybe it nags at them, but life goes on. I get all the money they collect from turning tricks, and life goes on for me, too. Once or twice, a girl woke up in the cells wondering how she'd gotten there and why she was under arrest for solicitation, but that wasn't my problem. They all had rich parents, they could buy themselves out of it, and my name was never mentioned. They couldn't mention it. They didn't remember it. "That lasted me a long time...probably until about '92. I used the time and the money to study hypnosis, to refine the drugs...I'd gotten good enough that I didn't need the drug at all anymore. I could just use my eyes and my voice, and women would go under for me. I'd invented variations on the drug; I was selling guaranteed aphrodisiacs to college boys who wanted their girlfriends to put out, I was selling term papers soaked in a mild euphoric that made the professors love what they were reading, I had three girls whose brains I'd burned out permanently that couldn't think past a fifth-grade level and thought my dick tasted like cherries. I thought I was brilliant. Real 'King of the World' type stuff. "Turned out I was just a small-time hustler. "Frank grabbed me back in '92. He didn't hypnotize me, or drug me. He just had four big guys who did everything he asked grab me, bundle me into the back of a limo, and drive me to his place. I was damn near shitting myself. I thought that I'd pissed off the Mafia, or the Columbians, or one of the other big drug cartels. As it turned out, the Mafia was small potatoes next to Them. "They really don't like to use names. Everyone has handles, like 'Dreamreaper' or 'Sinistra', or symbols like hawk's talons or blue butterflies...but They keep clear of real names. I don't know why. It's not because they're afraid of the law, or the press. I guess it's just because they're superstitious. Frank was an exception. I am too. "Frank grabbed me that day because he saw potential in me. He wanted to give me a job. Instead of snatching girls on a part-time basis, for temporary inductions, he was giving me the chance to get into full-time slavery. I wasn't sure...looking back on how I was back then, it kind of surprises me that I hesitated. I think it was because I was scared. I'd thought I was all alone, the big mindfucker, and suddenly I'd found out I was just a big fish in a little pond. There were people out there who'd already done what I'd done, and taken it further. And they knew who I was. Yeah, looking back, that was why I hesitated. "He told me then how much I could get for just a single girl, with just basic reprogramming. The sum he mentioned melted away all that hesitation. I bought into his plans real quick, and the two of us went into business. "Of course, when I got home, I started doing a little work on my own brain. It had occurred to me that a guy who was willing to mind control women for money wouldn't be averse to mind-controlling men for larger shares of the money, so I started dosing myself with my own mind-control drugs, and using pre-taped messages to 'immunize' myself to hypnotic control. Once a day, every day, for five years, I listened to that message. I still keep up with it about once a week. Saved my ass back in '99...but I'm getting ahead of myself. "Frank introduced me to some of the rest of Them. There aren't as many as you'd think...maybe fifty, sixty in the United States, and a further hundred or so scattered around the world. There's a big concentration of Them in East Asia...something to do with the tradition of alchemy, I think. I don't know, I didn't meet all of Them. A lot of Them only meet through emissaries, slaves...you'll have a deal going on where nobody ever meets face to face, but the messengers are so deeply programmed that it's like the real people were there. I know; I helped program them. "That went on for another five years or so. I made more money than you could imagine, and more than money. I still know some of their triggers, ones so widely implanted that they can't just change them. To this day, if I felt like it, I could make Peter Jennings strip naked in the middle of 'World News Tonight', and if people changed the channel, they'd find Dan Rather starkers instead. They can't touch me...but I can't touch them either. Stalemate. "It was kinda dumb, what changed it all. I mean, I wasn't a person with standards back then. No morals, no ethics, no real decency of any sort. If you'd have asked me if there was anything I wouldn't do, I would have said no. I would have believed it, too. "But there was this girl. She was 19, working as a waitress in Queens to put herself through college. Her parents had died in a car crash when she was seventeen, and she hadn't managed the money all that well. Her extended family thought she was too wild, a real party girl. They thought that she was going to get herself murdered within a month, and as far as they were concerned, it would have served her right. "We'd tagged to her through her computer, same as you. She was young, she was pretty, and she was reading stories about getting her mind blanked over every night. Her waitressing job turned over its staff completely every six months; nobody there was going to give it a second thought if she vanished. We picked a night when she was closing, and waited for her to walk home. "I made the pick-up...Frank was back at the lab. The client who wanted her also wanted her breasts surgically enhanced, and Frank was doing the operation. So I got the girl. "I dressed as a cop to make the pick-up. It's a good disguise. It's a figure that inspires trust, but one that also conveys an air of authority. People listen to cops. They do what they're told. This girl was no exception. "I walked up to her, told her that it was a bad night to be out alone, and that I'd walk her home. She looked a little nervous, but she agreed. Probably because I'd arranged for a few shady characters to be hanging around on the next couple of blocks. Psychological trick, to make her identify with me more. "After a few minutes, I started swinging my nightstick. A lot of hypnosis relies on giving a physical focus for the attention, and spinning objects work great. You have to follow them with your eyes. It takes effort. She was no exception. "Once I could see that she was watching the nightstick, I started talking about how long a walk it was, and how surprised I was that she didn't get tired out. I played on that theme for a while, suggesting how exhausted she was...she finally asked if we could sit down and rest, and of course, I agreed. Once she'd sat down, she was done for. Five minutes was all it took. "I brought her back to the lab, and started to check her out while I got her ready for surgery. We wanted to make sure she was disease-free, mostly, but there were a few other things to look for...scars that would only be seen when she was naked, blemishes, that sort of thing. Stuff that would lower the price. I didn't expect to find out that she was three months pregnant. "I told Frank. I figured that was it. We'd have to find a different girl, and hope the client would be satisfied. Frank just said he'd take care of it. I left, secure in the knowledge of a job well done. "When I got back, I found out that Frank had given the girl an abortion before the boob job, and that she was on her way to LA to do pornography. "That was when I found out what my limit was, Maggie. When I found out that underneath all the shit that had piled up on my soul over fifteen years, I still had something decent in there. That was when I decided I just couldn't do it anymore. I walked out on Frank, and started using what I knew to keep girls like you away from guys like him. I can't deny that I did some pretty lousy things in my time, and I don't think I'll ever atone for them. But I'm not trying to atone for them. I'm just trying to make sure that it doesn't happen to you." There was a long silence. He looked over at Maggie, but she had her head turned to face the window. "Maggie?" he asked. "I'll understand if you hate me. I deserve it. But you still need to trust me. I can't save you if you won't let me. You've seen how little resistance you have to hypnosis, first-hand. If you run now, without me, then it's just a question of time before you wind up like all those other girls. I was responsible for them...so that makes me responsible for you." Maggie didn't look out the window for a long time. "I don't hate you," she said at last. "It sounds like you want me to, like it'll make things better. But you were a different person, then." She turned to look at him again. "You're trying to be someone better now. You're trying to save my life. My soul. I still trust you." She smiled faintly. "Even if you don't want me to." Burke nodded. "Then let's get on with saving your soul." TO BE CONTINUED... A Question of Time, Ch. 04 Maggie wasn't thinking about anything. Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone. She just lay there, focusing on the sensations of pleasure as she gently drifted on hypnotic currents, her mind sinking down, deeper and deeper, unable to move, unable to think, unable to resist...she could hear a voice speaking to her, and it felt so good to do what the voice said. So good. So relaxing to not think, to just do as she was told like a good girl, and obey instructions. Good girls always obeyed instructions, and she was a good girl. She obeyed, and obedience felt so good, so... "Wake up," Burke said. He didn't even sound angry anymore, just sort of resigned. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she realized she didn't even have her clothes on this time. "Pretty bad, huh?" she asked, trying not to notice the damp spot on the bed. A week ago, she'd probably have been more embarrassed by Burke seeing her naked than by her failure to resist hypnosis again, but seven days of sharing hotel rooms with him all day and driving all night had changed that a bit. Burke had never tried anything sexual, and probably was too nice to ever try anything, but the forced intimacy of their trip had made her surprisingly comfortable about losing her privacy. Burke shook his head. "Five seconds. And within five minutes of going under, I'd gotten your clothes off, found out the names of three girlfriends without close family members or friends who would miss them, and gotten a signature on a document giving me power of attorney over you. I'm beginning to suspect that you're never going to learn how to resist hypnosis." Maggie blushed. She was trying so hard to resist trance, but it seemed instead like she only got weaker and more compliant with each lesson. The traitorous itch between her thighs had only gotten worse, too. Each time Burke put her under, she came out of it horny as hell, frustrated, and just slightly too embarrassed by her poor performances to slip off to the bathroom and frig herself off. After all those stories, all those times imagining some mysterious man taking her off to a hotel room and hypnotizing her, it was finally happening...and all she could do was feel ashamed at giving into it so easily. "How far to Mexico?" she asked at last, trying to change the subject. Burke sighed. "At least another three days. They had up two more roadblocks last night, forced me to change direction a few times. I think we actually wound up driving away from Mexico more than we drove towards it last night." Maggie rubbed her eyes. "I hadn't noticed," she said. In fact, she felt more than a little guilty that she spent so much of each night's drive sound asleep in the passenger seat. She knew better than to offer to drive by now-Burke knew so much better than her how to spot the danger signs of a hypnoslaver trap-but she could at least try to keep him company, so that he wasn't just playing loud music to try to stay awake all night. Burke stood up, stretched, and headed towards the bathroom. "Far as I'm concerned," he said, "that's good. I'm going to hit the head for a moment, here, then we'll take one more whack at training you to resist before I go to sleep." He grinned a crooked grin. "If you can't last at least thirty seconds this time, I get the bed and you can sleep on the floor." Maggie groaned as he closed the door. Not another day of sleeping on the floor...with a sigh, she began gathering up her scattered clothes. ***** That night was when it all went bad. By the time things actually collapsed around them, it wasn't technically night anymore. The sky was pink with early sunlight, shining down on desert floor as the two of them rode south. Maggie had just woken up, her head still fogged with sleep, and the motion of the car suddenly felt unfamiliar and sickening to her. "What's going on?" she asked. "We've got trouble," Burke responded tersely as he put pressure on the accelerator. "They're pulling out all the stops." Maggie wished that the fear would make her instantly alert, like it did in stories, but instead it just made her want to curl up in the fetal position and cling to Burke for support. "More roadblocks?" "Roadblocks, tails, and I thought I saw a helicopter up there a little bit ago. You must be worth quite a lot of money to Them. Not that I'm too surprised...after the last week; I imagine that someone as pliant as you would have a lot of uses for Them." Maggie felt a surge of erotic pride at that comment, and tried to quell it. "But we can lose them, right?" "Going to try," he said, swinging the steering wheel into a hard right onto an on-ramp. Maggie clenched her eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see it if they lost control of the car and crashed. They didn't. She felt the car veer left, then right, then left again. Sheer terror seemed to make her retreat deeper into herself. After all the things Burke had told her, all the things They would make her do...she didn't want to become a slave. She'd do anything, anything at all, to avoid that fate. She opened her eyes just a little, just enough to see that they'd turned onto a tiny dusty road, little more than a dirt track leading through the desert. Burke's BMW shuddered as it traveled over the rough roads at speeds that surely neither the road nor the car were meant to undergo. Maggie closed her eyes again and kept them closed. When Burke stopped, it was with such suddenness that Maggie felt the seat belt push into her chest. She opened her eyes for the last time and saw the end of the road. It was, literally, the end of the road. A faded yellow sign read 'SCENIC OVERLOOK', and the road stopped amidst clumps of rock and a steep drop overlooking a ravine. Burke sat there for a long second, staring out at the rocks with a thousand-yard stare that made Maggie's soul ache with sorrow. She knew what was about to happen to her, but Burke...she felt worse for him. She wasn't going to remember any of this. He was. Suddenly she wished she'd fucked him back at the hotel room yesterday. Maggie could see a trail of dust in the side-view mirror, the sign of a rapidly approaching car, and her mind raced with improbable solutions. "We could try to run," she said. "On foot, I mean." "They'd catch you within minutes," he said. She heard the sorrow in his voice, and her soul ached for him. "Dead end. And it's all my fault." Her eyes were wet with tears. "You could...I mean, I can't escape, but if there's no way out, I...I think I might rather be dead than live like that. I don't want them to put me under and brainwash me. If you-" "No," Burke said. His eyes were suddenly wild, filled with a manic hope. "That's only if there's no way out." "But if we can't run, and we can't fight, then-" Burke looked her in the eyes, and suddenly she couldn't look away. "If they catch you, if they brainwash you, then there's no hope, Maggie. None at all. But if I put you under...if I brainwash you myself, and give them to you, then deep down you'd be under my control. Not theirs. I could come back for you, find you, and set you free. It's the only way to escape Them, Maggie. To give yourself to them willingly. To trust me to come back for you, and free you, and to surrender your mind until then. Do you trust me, Maggie?" That was the moment when Margaret Jane Westbrook knew it was all over. She knew she couldn't look away from Burke's cold, gray eyes. She knew that hypnotizing someone over and over didn't help them build resistance. She knew that people like Burke described would never have let him live this long if he was a real independent. She knew that she was losing track of her surroundings, she knew that she was so damned horny she would do anything to cum, she knew that despite all the other things she knew she was no more able to distrust Burke than she was to open the car door and fly over the ravine... She knew that she hadn't fled away from hypnoslavers. She'd run to them. Burke was still waiting for her response. She could see in his eyes that he knew that she knew, and she wondered why he'd gone to all this effort, really. She was so weak, so submissive, that he could almost certainly push her over the edge directly. But he wanted her to believe that he'd free her someday. Maybe that would keep her from fighting it. Maybe it would salve his conscience, believing that he really would keep his promise. But she knew how she had to respond. Her question surprised both of them. It must have taken an unimaginable amount of strength to ask it, more strength than either one of them thought she had by then. Nonetheless, she managed to ask "Promise me you'll come back some day?" as her eyes slipped three-quarters closed. "I promise," Burke said. Perhaps it was the truth, perhaps it was just a lie they both believed, perhaps it was just a lie she wanted to believe he believed. But it was enough. Maggie's eyes closed, and she was gone. Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone. Maggie wasn't thinking about anything. ***** Frank was. When Maggie didn't come back to work, and everyone spread rumors about how she'd quit in a rage over the condition of the womens' restroom, Frank wondered about that last night he'd seen her at the club. When it came out that she'd also liquidated all her assets, but left all her possessions behind at the apartment she still had five months' lease on, Frank worried about that strange man he'd seen her with that night. And when everyone else dismissed Maggie as a flake who'd gone off to some new life in Rio or something, Frank wondered what would have happened if he'd managed to work up the courage to talk to her that night. Would she have gone with him, instead of that strange man with the cold gray eyes? Would she still be here now? Where was she now? Sometimes you don't get all the answers. ***** EPILOGUE The temperature of the health club was just slightly cool, but Becky didn't notice. She'd been going for an extra-long workout today, and the air couldn't feel cool enough as she pushed herself for a last half-mile on the treadmill. Her legs felt rubbery, sweat dripped into her eyes, and the music in her earphones had just become noise, but she was determined to finish, not just stop. The man who just seemed to appear next to her startled her so much she almost fell off the treadmill. He wasn't a member, he wasn't here to work out, he wasn't even dressed in gym clothes. He just had on a T-shirt, jeans, a leather jacket, a pair of cowboy boots, and some ridiculous hat that she couldn't imagine anyone would be caught dead with in London. But he spoke with a quiet, urgent intensity that somehow carried over her workout music and sent chills up her spine. "You're in grave danger," he said roughly. "You have to trust me implicitly, or you'll never make it out of here." THE END