The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

There is a rumor. It’s out there, but you have to be filthy rich just to hear it in the first place. The rumor is that for $100 million, you can fuck a superheroine. The one that went missing. No not her; they found that one. The other one.

They say she’s tucked away somewhere, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, some place like that. There’s this guy, has some kinda power over her. Like she’s still super strong and shit, but this guy can make her do whatever he says.

And he can take her powers away too. He says some kinda mumbo jumbo magic words and chains her to the floor, and then she’s as weak as a kitten. Well, weak as a normal woman, anyway. And that’s when you take her. That’s when you fuck her, beat her, abuse her, make her beg for mercy, whatever you want. All night long.

Yeah, it’s just a rumor. Helluva story anyway. Helluva stroke fantasy. Sure makes you wish you had a hundred mil to burn, doesn’t it?

In the bar at the most expensive hotel in Dubai they saw each other. All these guys, the elite, the powerful, the billionaires, they know each other. The twenty-something software genius was actually leaving when he noticed the middle-aged oil mogul and decided to stop and chat.

He seems as if he’s bursting to say something, but is trying hard to approach in coyly, obliquely.

“In town for business or pleasure, Faisal?”

“A little of both. What about you, Doug? Strange to see you without your entourage.”

“I’ve been here a couple of weeks, alone. Vacation. Sometimes the groupies just get in the way. No, a little snorkeling, a little sailing, a little hang gliding. Going back tomorrow. You?”

“My last appointment was yesterday. My Alana and I spent the day shopping.”

“I really don’t mean to be, um, insulting, but does the word ‘pussy-whipped’ mean anything to you?”

The older man laughs aloud. “No, young man. It’s her innocence, her excitement. It amuses me. When she gets bored, jaded, when she no longer wants me to take her shopping, that is when I will be done with her.“

The younger man can’t think of a good segue from that so he decided to broach the subject directly. “So, ah, there is this rumor about Majestic Woman. Have you heard it?”

“That she is a $100 million-a-night whore? Yes, I’ve heard it.”

“It’s true.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. She’s right here in Dubai. I was there last week. The guy, her handler, her pimp, he’ll let you do anything that’s not likely to kill her.”

“You...you don’t say.”

“Faisal, I want to show you something. Is up in my room but I can bring it right down.”

“I’ll wait.”

A few minutes later the younger man returns with what looks like a small duffel bag. Inside, bottles of ink, some needled apparatus.

“It’s a tattooing kit. That Indian pimp of hers actually let me give her a tramp stamp while I was reaming out her ass. ‘Doug Westerberg was here’, with an arrow down to her butt crack. I’ve made an entry in her permanent record now.“

“Very creative, Doug. But her owner is Pakistani, not Indian. ‘Ibrahim Beg’, tall, large man? Definitely Pakistani. Oh, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. I sampled the lady’s pleasures just three nights ago. There is no such tattoo on her back.”

Doug is processing several shocks at once, but the loss of his handiwork is the biggie. “What? No tattoo? Are you sure?”

“Quite certain. I spent a great deal of time admiring that particular part of her...anatomy. Nice dimples. Perfectly-formed derrière. Clean and unmarked and soft as the day she was born.”

“Damn, I spent almost a million getting an expert to teach me how to use this stuff. Shit.”

“Alas, Doug. I had my disappointment too.” With a smooth practiced motion, Faisal is suddenly holding a three-foot-long telescoping police baton. “This toy was confiscated unfortunately. At least there were some other fun toys laying around.”

“But the tattoo, how did they do it, Faisal? Tattoo removal like that should have left scarring, stitches. Hell, skin graft discoloration!“

“The man can magically remove the superpowers of one of the most powerful supers on Earth. He keeps her trapped and enthralled even when she has powers. And you want to know how he removes a tattoo?“

“You’re right. I guess I’m just disappointed. I mean the woman hasn’t aged in, what, six, seven decades, right? I thought I might be able to hitch a little ride on her immortality, y’know?”

“It was an interesting idea. I applaud you.”

“Yeah. So...no beat-down stick for you, huh?”

“He was afraid I might accidentally kill her.”

“I heard that! Gotta protect the goose that fucks the golden pricks.”

“Such an elegant turn of phrase you have, Douglas.”

“Whatever. Hey, did you know the price was negotiable?”

“Prices are always negotiable, Doug.”

“C’mon, give. What did you pay?”

“Are we going to compare penis sizes next, Doug? sigh Very well, I paid $50 million.“

“Damn! I paid 80 mil. Shit. Still worth it though.”

“Indeed. The verification phase alone was almost worth the price.”

“Ha! For you maybe. I tried to sucker-punch her. Bruised my knuckles on her solar plexus. But she was a lot more bruised than I was when I was done for the night.“

“Ah. I used a baseball stick—”

“Bat?”

“Excuse me, a baseball bat, that Mr. Beg provided, against her knee. It broke in half, the bat, of course, not the leg. I also made her fly around the room for me. The rest, of course, was only somewhat more mundane sadism, made interesting only by the identity of the subject.“

“Well, your sadism may have been ‘mundane’. Mine was pretty intense. She was bruised, battered, crying, and begging for mercy long before sunrise.“

“Look, Doug...Alana is waiting for me. I have to go now.”

“Sure, sure. Later.”

Cindi and I are enjoying a late dinner in the other side of town. I’m giving her highlights of Doug and Faisal’s conversation, more or less in real time. I’m trying to play down the specifics.

Faisal was her last “client”, and by far her worst in the entire four months. His “mundane sadism” is something the Marquis de Sade himself would have thought high art. And he didn’t even use that much pain. It was mostly a matter of emphasis, of timing, of some ineffable dominance that he just exuded. I had to stay in her head the whole night, talking to her, reassuring her, letting her know how much time had passed so she would know that the end of this horror was coming, however slowly. It was all I could do to keep her from folding completely under Faisal’s onslaught. Hell, it shook me, and I was only an observer.

And it certainly doesn’t start or end with Cindi. Faisal’s Alana is waiting for him all right, blindfolded, gagged, and tied in a picture-perfect, but rather uncomfortable, shibari rope binding. It looks like he has another night of “mundane sadism” ahead of him tonight.

Just mentioning his name makes Cindi shiver, but she insists. She wants to make sure things are working according to plan.

“So you’re sure he’ll tell Blake when he sees him next week?” Of course, she’s talking about the boy genius now, not the middle-aged sheik.

“I don’t see how he can avoid it. He was practically blurting out ‘I fucked Majestic Woman’ as soon as he saw, um, the other guy.”

“Hell, he was so into the idea that he tried to have it permanently printed on my ass. Athena may be a monster, but I was never so glad for her shield as I was the next morning.”

“Me too, babe. Me too. Now, do you really believe Blake will play it cool, or will he turn the boy over to the cops, or worse, to the Wraith.“

“I believe he’ll want to see for himself. I believe he’ll want to see what I’ve gotten myself into, or if its even really me, before he does anything. Blake is a very...hands-on person in some ways. Look, I still think we should just tell him, bring him into the cabal.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No, Cindi. I won’t. It’s dangerous enough that you know.”

“It’s dangerous to try to trick him, My Lord. Even more risky to try to control him.“

“It was dangerous to try to control you too. When did you figure out that the penthouse was in Falkirk?”

“Sometime during the first week, not long after you dropped the dream masquerade.”

“Exactly. At any point after that you could have showed up on my doorstep and tried to kill me, but you didn’t.”

“But that’s diff—”

“Look, you wanted him in the plan; fine, he’s in the plan. But he’s not on the planning committee.“

“My Lord...I am your slave in this, as in all things...”

I groan. “Cindi—”

“But I think you should at least be ready to tell him the truth if you have to. At least think about what you would say.”

“Fine. I’ll think about it.”

We’re both a bit irritable. We haven’t been getting enough sleep. That probably deserves some explanation. Greg and Annette are still doing our sleeping for us, but now they are in sync again. They are together in Dubai as Ibrahim and Majestic Woman while Cindi and I use their bodies in Australia. Then they are together in Australia in their own bodies when Cindi and I are in Dubai.

Of course, in both sets of bodies, they are supposed to be doing our sleeping for us. Unfortunately, they’ve been spending a fair amount of that sleep time, in both sets of bodies, “getting reacquainted”, by which I mean “fucking like weasels”.

Cindi, “my slave in all things”, thinks it’s cute and romantic. She doesn’t want me to admonish them. So I haven’t...yet. Needless to say, we are all a bit cranky.

Cindi is looking at me strangely and nervously. Maybe I’m more than a bit cranky. And maybe it’s from more than just lack of sleep. Watching the woman I love—how strange it feels to formulate that thought after twelve thousand years—watching her have her skin cut and flayed, her body battered and bruised, her bones broken, several times per month, it’s taking its toll...on me.

It doesn’t matter that she heals as soon as she is unchained. I can’t un-see it. I can’t un-feel the way I feel when some bastard with more money than morals is beating the shit out of her.

It doesn’t matter that she had more than two millennia of tough, physical, painful, dangerous front-line military experience before she became a demigoddess. Actually I’m sure that’s a great help to her, but it doesn’t help me much.

But Cindi is giving me that “My Lord is displeased and I don’t know why” look. Which means that she will be on pins and needles for the rest of the night. We’ll be in Falkirk in about four hours and that’s when we’ll deal with it.

I know what my problem is, but I can’t tell her the truth. My problem is that I can’t stand to see her taking this abuse. She can stand it, but I can’t. Even Faisal’s “mundane sadism” is fading from her thoughts much quicker than it is from mine. My problem is that I just need to man up, put on my big boy pants, and execute my part of the plan half as well as Cindi is executing hers.

I’ll have to tell Cindi something when we get to Falkirk. By then I’ll have something figured out. Maybe she’ll demand that I punish her. She’s been doing that more frequently lately. I have to admit that it helps some, sick bastard that I am. Somehow it helps her too. Maybe we’re both sick. Maybe being the ultimate BDSM pimp-prostitute pair is changing us, and not in a good way. Thank goodness we only average one client every two or three weeks. I can barely stand that.

Greg and Annette are actually getting some sleep tonight. In Falkirk they’ve already managed six hours of shut-eye. That is already more than their average total sleep time per day per body over the past few months. Rats. Annette is waking up to, um, answer the call of nature. She’s already thinking about waking Greg “the best way” when she comes back.

No. Not tonight. I tell her that if she does that I’m going to make her start sleeping in the doggy bed again. That actually makes her a little more wet, but still she obeys me. When she comes back to bed she snuggles back into spooning with Greg. Unconsciously he puts an arm around her. She holds his hand to her breast, but doesn’t try for more. Soon she falls back asleep. Good. Maybe Cindi and I will both have our wits about us when we have our talk later.

After Doug Westerberg gushed about his Dubai experience to Blake Warren it only took two days for Blake’s intermediaries to contact my impossible-to-crack transaction network. It only took one more day to negotiate a price, a date, and a set of ground rules. It was all pretty standard as these things go. But Cindi and I are both so excited we can barely contain ourselves.

In less than two weeks Blake with be standing in front of us as a “client”, trying to figure out what nefarious fate befell his friend Cynthia and how he can save her.

Fast forward those 12 days. “Tonight,” as Rod Stewart might say, “is the night.” But I must say that Cindi and I are far from certain that everything is going to be alright. There is going to be a great deal of very serious playacting this evening, by all three of us. Blake has to put on a convincing front as a thrill-seeking playboy billionaire who barely knows Majestic Woman and is willing to be at least as amateurishly sadistic toward her as Doug Westerberg was. At the same time he will be trying to gather as much covert surveillance as he can get away with.

Cindi has a much more subtle role to play. She has to convince Blake that she is utterly and unshakably enthralled to “Ibrahim Beg” (me). At the same time she has to find a subtle way to convince Blake that there is some looseness in those mental chains, some slim hook of a hope upon which that he can hang his dreams of rescue. I’ve looked into Blake’s mind a great deal over the past two weeks. Cindi and I have “improvved” various of scenarios over and over again, based on his plans. She’s as ready as she can be.

My role is the most complicated of all. To Blake I must play the Slavemaster-pimp. I must be the master-of-ceremonies, the gatekeeper, the showman, the enemy who doesn’t know he is the enemy. To Cindi I must be like the undercover cop’s handler. I must be the voice in her mind that keeps her informed about what is going on in Blake’s head, about what she needs to do or not do. But I’m also in the room, so I have to keep Blake off-balance, uncomfortable. I can’t give him any time to think. I can’t allow him to analyse the situation and probe for holes.

Beyond all that I have to remain above it all. There are schemes within schemes within schemes here. Subterfuge, overlaid with meta-subterfuge, overlaid with meta-meta-subterfuge, and I am the only observer with the perspective to keep track of what is really going on. I definitely have my work cut out for me.

Late in the afternoon, Blake meets my four big uglies in the lobby of his hotel. “Ibrahim Beg” has told both Blake and his escorts that the escorts are wired for sound, but the bug-sweeper in Blake’s watch finds nothing. So he risks trying to chat up the muscle, but they’re both stone-faced and closed-mouthed. They believe they are wired, whether Blake believes it or not. Blake is not surprised by the black SUV with the dark tinted windows. Perhaps he was hoping for something a bit more original. The black velvet bag that they tie over his head is not much of a surprise either, although the plastic tube circulating fresh, cool air under the hood is a nice touch. $60 million does buy some creature comforts apparently.

Of course this would be the perfect set up for a kidnapping. Well, except that even goons have families, and, by arrangement, Blake’s people are keeping a watchful eye on those families until Blake is safe in his room tomorrow morning.

He is not surprised that they take a winding path through Dubai. He is only mildly surprised that they manage to disorient him enough that he is lost. The ticking pattern of the watch against his skin tells him that the SUV is blocking his backup locators: GPS, eLORAN, TACAN, and local Wi-Fi signals. Blake didn’t even attempt to bring his LoH communicator. There’s no easy way to hide it, even with the Wraith’s holographics or to make it look like anything other than a very high-tech device. The cursory search they gave him at the SUV would have turned it up in any case. But that’s okay, he still has some tricks up his sleeve.

They arrive in an enclosed garage and escort his hooded form to the elevator, down, then up, then down, then.... Well, you get the picture. After about a half hour the elevator stops, they take him through three different heavy doors separated by winding hallways. After they go through the last door they remove the hood.

He’s in the “game room” with Majestic Woman and “Ibrahim Beg”. I am standing in front of Blake but off to the side so that he has an unobstructed view. The game room is 30-by-30 meters with a high ceiling and no windows. Scattered around the room are all sorts of BDSM toys, dildos, gags, restraints, clamps, flails, ropes, straps. The walls are host to various rings, hooks and other access points. Against the far wall is an over-the-top, luxurious, much-larger-than-king-size bed. The bed is also decorated with a variety of posts, rings, hooks, bars, and the like.

In the middle of the room, in full uniform, Majestic Woman is kneeling, ass touching heels, knees spread, hands upturned and resting on mid-thigh, chest outthrust, head humbly bowed, eyes averted to the floor. At the sight of her Blake’s heart skips a beat, but he manages to remain outwardly calm.

In Mr. Beg’s lightly-accented English, I begin. I always feel like some sort of Bond villain at this stage of the proceedings. I’ve learned to embrace it and ham it up.

“Welcome, Mr. Warren. Would you like a beverage?” I gesture with my gun toward the bar. On hearing “Mr. Warren”, Majestic Woman gasps and glances up to meet Blake’s gaze, then flinches and lowers her eyes again.

“Ah, it appears she knows you. That has only happened once before. This may be a most...interesting night. Your drink, Mr Warren?”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” he replies, striding toward his fallen friend.

I hustle to keep up. “So, bitch, exactly how do you know Blake Warren?”

«This is it. If she has no resistance left, I’m a dead man.», thinks Blake.

She flinches again as if struck. She looks conflicted. “Master...we...we met at a charity fundraiser...in Carthage City...five...six...years ago.”

“Is that all, Majesticunt?”

She shifts nervously.

«Shit, shit, shit.»

“I have seen him at many Legion of Heroes...events. He is...a very generous...benefactor.”

I round on Blake now, gun barrel leveled at his head. “Is there a reason that I should trust a friend of the LoH, when I have turned their favorite poster-girl into a whore?”

Cindi flinches again. It’s just the right subtle move, like she’s trying to resist but can’t. She could win an Oscar for this performance.

Blake eyes me levelly and makes a show of “trying” to keep his cool. “Publicly, I’m the friend of everything that’s good and wholesome, the LoH included. It’s good PR, but privately...hell, even not so privately...do I need to pull out 15 years of scandal rags that have caught me in various states of undress with some of the hottest cootch in America? In the world? Hey, Majestic Tits, tell your master what I said to you at the last fundraiser you ran as chair.”

A pained look crosses her face. This is really risky, but if it works, he’s in. “He said that...if...if I gave him a ‘good reason’, he could be ‘much more generous’, and then... then he goosed me.”

Blake had actually played out that scene in front of several reporters, including one who was sniffing uncomfortably close to the Wraith’s secret identity. Blake had paid exorbitant bribes to keep the incident out of the papers too. But it succeeded in killing speculation about Blake and the Wraith.

“Very well. I believe you, Mr. Warren.” I lower the gun. “In point of fact, your reputation precedes you. I must admit that I find your hypocrisy...refreshing.”

Now that the crisis is over, Blake notices how everything Cindi said was the truth, just not the whole truth by several orders of magnitude. «Whatever is going on here, she still has some fight down in there somewhere. She didn’t give me up.»

“Well, Mr. Warren. Perhaps you would like to verify her bona fides? Some of my clients have enjoyed that part of the proceedings even more than...what comes after.“

“You’ve had fag clients who would rather waste time beating a brick wall than fucking her? It takes all kinds I guess. No, I’m sure it’s her.” He reaches down under her chin and lifts it up, only because she cooperates in the lifting. Looking her in the eyes, he adds, “It’s clearly her, but I must admit she looks different with fear in her eyes. Better. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you tame this insufferable bitch?”

Now Cindi’s fear threatens to become real. This is just too reminiscent of that night with Ares. «“It’s okay, baby bitch. It’s all gonna be okay. Just remember, all three of us are putting on an act, but only two of us know that.“»

“Let’s just call it my little ‘trade secret’, Mr. Warren. I can be very...persuasive. So, am I to understand that you waive your contractual right to verify that this is Majestic Woman?”

“I’ve ‘verified’ her to my satisfaction. It’s her.”

“Very well then.”

I turn and speak sharply to Cindi, a scene that we have played over and over throughout these endless months, ”Worship me, slave!”

Jerkily, as if pulled by invisible strings, Majestic Woman crawls to me, plants wet kisses all over my shoes, and begs to serve me in a pitiful, whining voice.

Over her quiet sobs I begin my incantation. Not in Urdu or Farsi or Arabic or Hindi. Long ago we purposely picked an obscure language we were sure Blake would not recognize. Memorizing an actual “incantation” in an actual language has some actual benefits. It sounds more realistic. I can deliver my lines with great conviction and drama. And if two customers with excellent memories were to happen to compare notes, then the incantation would at least pass the sniff test. As I finish the last few staccato phrases. Cindi jerks back up to her kneeling-sitting position, hands upturned and resting on her thighs, her face a frozen mask of fear.

Casually I walk back and retrieve the chain that is tethered to the floor by the foot of the bed. Then I drag it back. I mutter another phrase as I padlock the chain to her collar. Then I utter one last sneering phrase, smacking her hard across her face to show Blake that her powers are gone.

There is, of course, an interesting double misdirection going on here that was absent from previous...transactions. Blake knows that I know that it was the chain, not the incantation that removed her powers. But he doesn’t know that I know that he knows that. Take your time with that last sentence. It’ll make sense eventually. In any case, Blake thinks he is one up on me. It gives him confidence that was badly shaken by my earlier gun play.

So now, with a magician’s flourish, he removes his suit coat and hands it to me. As he does so he incidentally flicks his wrist enough to release three holographically-stealthed micro-copter video cameras. True to their programming, they locate the bed, find good vantage points on the wall, the ceiling, the bedpost, and anchor themselves in place. All done silently and invisibly. Immediately they track Majestic Woman and begin dumping sound and visuals into the receiver in Blake’s watch.

This guy’s good. The only reason I know about the cameras at all is that I’m inside his head. Of course, Cindi knew that he would find some way to record the “session”. His unwitting part in the plan depends on it. In fact one could say that deploying these bugs is the most important thing Blake has to do this evening. We might all three agree with that statement, but for different reasons of course.

“Mr. Warren, for the next eight hours, Majestic Woman is your slave bitch. Enjoy.”

“Are you leaving then?”

“I assumed you had read the contract, Mr. Warren,” I say in a puzzled voice, “No, I will remain nearby to protect my...investment.”

And so the fun begins... “Very well then. Come on, slut.”

Yanking the chain roughly Blake half-drags her squealing behind him to the bed and throws her onto it.

“Take off that glorified star-spangled teddy, cum bucket. I want to see what kind of whore $60 million dollars buys.”

Cindi is crying, begging him not to hurt her. She nervously and hastily begins to remove her uniform.

Looking around the room as she is busy undressing, Blake’s eyes light upon some toys. «Gotta make this good.» He picks up a riding crop and two nipple clamps connected by a short chain.

“Sit up, slut.”

“Yes, sir.”

WHACK The crop comes down hard across her ass. “Yes, WHO?“

“Y-y-yes, M-m-m-master?”

“Better.”

He clamps down her nipples and pulls the chain, eliciting a sharp yell, “Please don’t hurt me, Master!”

WHACK “Don’t hurt what?“

“M-m-me?”

WHACK “WHAT?“

“Y-y-your s-s-slut?”

WHACK “My what?“

“Y-y-your whore?”

WHACK “My what?“

“Y-y-your...” She wails pitifully, “I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“Idiot!” WHACK “You’re” WHACK “A SLAVE” WHACK “SAY IT!“

“Please don’t hurt your slave!”

WHACK “Whose slave?“

“Please...don’t...”

WHACK “Whose slave?“

“AAAH! MASTER’S SLAVE! PLEASE DON’T HURT THIS SLAVE, MASTER!”

“Better. Now suck me, bitch.”

Shaking hands, loosen Blake’s belt, then unbutton and unzip his pants, which fall to the floor.

Having established his “slave training” theme for the evening, Blake begins to put her through her paces: sucking his cock, learning painfully to speak of herself only in the third person, begging for mercy that never comes, taking his cock up her un-lubricated ass with strangely arrhythmic strokes...

Wait a second...

Oh my God, He’s fucking her in code!

«“Cindi are you getting this?“»

«Got it, My Lord. I have to wait for him to finish the initial sign before I can formulate the counter-sign.»

Until this moment I didn’t even know that the LoH had a secret code. It just never came up. In their minds I can see this thing of beauty that they will be using to communicate. It’s basically a 64-by-64 block of the English alphabet and Kanji characters, including most of the so-called “first 5,000”. The initial call sign includes some permutation on the square, but aside from that the code is just 12 bits per character. Apparently every LoH member undergoes some pretty intense hypnosis in order to be able to do the code translation on the fly.

«Should I pretend I missed it, My Lord?»

«“No, he’s expecting you to get it. Even as far gone as you apparently are. I think you should respond on the first attempt. Actually this is perfect. You can pretend you are ‘free to communicate’ as long as I can’t tell that you are doing it.“»

It takes over a minute for Blake to fuck the initial sign into her, and almost as long for her to moan and screech the counter-sign. But this turns out to be a turn of events that neither Cindi nor I had anticipated, though Cindi is kicking herself for not realizing that he would do this.

The code is based on a binary signalling system. That means that you need two of “something” to represent 0 and 1. The system is flexible enough that you can mix up the signalling bits, by just reestablishing a new definition of 0 and 1. At the start Blake is using anal thrusts as 0 and grunts as 1. Cindi is using two different pitches of terrified moans in response. But they keep changing the signal, all night long.

This slow-motion conversation is the real event, not the apparent sadomasochistic play that each of them is putting on for the other’s benefit. Over the course of the night, they manage to eek out what would be less than 15 minute’s worth of spoken conversation. I’m feeding Cindi most of her lines, based on where I want Blake to go and not go.

Blake: Are you okay? What happened to you?

Cindi: I’m fine, but you are in danger. What were you thinking?

Blake: You can’t be serious. I want to get you out of here.

Cindi: I don’t want to leave. I’m not able to want to leave.

Blake: What does that mean?

Cindi: I know I’m trapped. But I like it. I need it. Don’t press Blake, or you’ll be trapped too.

Blake: No, Cynthia. We can get you out of this. You’re not trapped.

Cindi: No, don’t try it. Or he’ll trap you too. Then he’ll have the whole Legion if he wants it.

Blake: Why is he doing this? Why whore you out?

Cindi: He knows that he can’t make me a supervillain. I’d find a way to kill myself first. And the way he captured me made it impossible to do much more than enslave me. I can’t explain it better than that.

Blake: So who is this guy? How did he capture you?

Cindi: He’s the one who gave me my collar. He made me tell you he was my boyfriend. I don’t know how he caught me. All I know is that I can’t defy him. I can’t lie to him. I can try to hold back things, but if he presses me he can find out just about anything by making me answer his questions.

Blake: We’ll get you out.

Cindi: No, Blake, no. Don’t even try. It’s impossible. I’ve tried everything. If he knew I was talking to you now, he could make me say anything to you, tell you any lie, turn you. This is dangerous, Blake. Dangerous to you! Dangerous to the Legion!

Blake: No. We can’t leave you like this. We won’t. I’m going to get you out of this.

Cindi: Now? Tonight?

Blake: No. It will take some time. But we’ll do it.

Cindi: No, Blake, don’t. I don’t want to leave. He’s made me not want to leave. If you try to free me he’ll make me fight you. People will get hurt and I guarantee that you won’t be able to deprogram me. It doesn’t work like that.

Blake: Cynthia. I can’t just leave you here. I can’t.

Cindi: You have to, Blake. I don’t want to leave. I can’t leave. Please don’t make me fight you. I don’t want to fight you. You are in danger. Right now. If he were to suspect anything, he would own you just as thoroughly as he owns me. I would die if he made me turn you, Blake. Please get out and don’t come back. Please!

Blake: I’m not abandoning you.

Cindi: God’s Lightning, Blake! You don’t have a choice. I can tell he’s getting suspicious. You’re not being cruel enough. Your best hope is to convince him that you really want to hurt me. This slave training crap is not working, you need to beat me up. You need to make it good.

Blake: No, Cynthia. I can only go so far here. I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if he kills me.

Cindi: Blake, you idiot. He won’t kill you! After he’s done with you you won’t even be able to wish he had. Look. Bruise me. Cut me. Break some bones. If you don’t hurt me, your mind won’t be your own when you leave here. That’s if he lets you leave at all. If he finds out we were talking you’ll end up like me or worse. You’ll only be able to wish you could wish you were dead.

Blake actually has been moderately cruel to her throughout all this. But we have to scare him into stepping up his game. It’s nearly dawn when he does manage to break her jaw. That causes “Ibrahim Beg” to step in and call a somewhat early halt to the fun, really only cutting less than an hour off of the full contracted eight. Blake makes a show of complaining about it, but Cindi has done a pretty good job of making him feel lucky to escape with his mind still intact.

Now it’s time to send him, and his recorded 3-camera video, back to the hotel.

So now Blake’s back in his hotel room, and he’s uploaded all three video streams from his watch. I swap him into the dungeon immediately. I’m in his body, in front of his laptop. Now I just need to upload these videos to the internet. Three simultaneous seven-hour long Majestic Woman sex tapes. This is going to drive the Amazon Queendom collectively nuts.

Suddenly the screen goes blank. SHIT! It can’t blue-screen on me now! But I’m not that lucky. It’s not a system crash; it’s a trap. The countdown starts. Thirty minutes. I probe Blake’s mind in the dungeon quickly. SHIT! The countdown is a misdirection. I don’t have 30 minutes, I have 5. And it’s not just the computer that will blow up at that point; it’s the cyanide capsule in Blake’s small intestine. He has figured out how to protect himself from a mind controller. He set it up years ago. GOD HOW I HATE DEALING WITH FUCKING GENIUSES!

There is a way Blake can save himself. There is a number he can call on his cell phone. HE doesn’t know who will answer. HE doesn’t know where they will be. HE doesn’t know what they will ask, but he knows it will be intensely, deeply personal. If he gets it right in 10 seconds the countdown stops. If he doesn’t get it right in 10 seconds, that’s it. No second chance. No more countdown. The laptop and the capsule blow immediately. Sayonara, Blake Warren. SHIT! Even I can’t waterboard a true answer GUARANTEED out of a man in 10 seconds.

I swap him back. I have no choice.

So there he is, back in his room, watching the countdown. SHIT! He’s not even going to make the phone call. IS HE NUTS?

«“Okay, Blake. You win this game of chicken. I’ll blink. I’ll turn off the road. I’ll take a knee. But you have to NOT DIE. Cind-Cynthia would never forgive me.“»

«First, who the fuck are you?»

«“I’m Cynthia’s lover, the noncombatant. We are running a sting together. Please don’t fuck it up, and please, please don’t kill yourself.“»

«So you’re saying she’s not really under some mind control spell.»

«“No, she’s not. Look we don’t have time. Can we compromise? Can you get your gatekeeper to reset the clock for an hour, maybe two? You can meet with us. Together. If I don’t convince you, then...you can die right there in front of both of us. Did I mention that she’ll never forgive me?“»

«Now what did you do to me. For a while I was a woman strapped to a table.»

«“I have certain psychic abilities. NOT DIRECT MIND CONTROL. Well, that should be obvious, or I’d just make you make the call. What I mean is that I can read thoughts. I can insert ideas, but you can reject those ideas. I can insert imaginary sensory experience, like this voice, but it’s clearly imaginary and you don’t have to believe it. I can also swap bodies with other minds at will. That is how I got you into that woman’s body while I was in yours, screwing things up royally I might add. Look, you can come met us in our home. You’ll know where we live. If you think something’s fishy you can...you can sic Powerhouse on us.“»

«Are you kidding? Sadie has been blaming herself for this whole thing for months. If I told her Cynthia was still alive and in Dubai she’d come here alright. She’d come here to plant a giant smooch right on Cynthia’s lips.»

«Look, Blake. We can catch up with the old gang later, but only if you MAKE THAT CALL.»

«Okay, I’ll call.»

Blake calls, listens to the question, and answers, “I was five years old. There were 37 pearls on the strand before I broke it. Winston ate 3 of them. The last one didn’t come out in his poop for 4 days. When it happened, you sent me to my room for the rest of the day. You also didn’t let me have any desserts for a month.”

The countdown stops.

On the phone comes the rejoinder, “Yes, but Tillie still snuck them up to your room every night.”

“You, ah, weren’t supposed to know about that, Mom.”

“Ha! Who do you think put her up to it? She wouldn’t have defied me. I ran that house with an iron fist!”

It’s an inside joke. The staff were more like family than employees. He laughs.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m still sorry about that, you know, Mom?... Oh, and Mom, I’m not completely out of the woods yet. Could you reset the timer for two hours?... Thanks, Mom, you’re the best.”

The countdown starts again at “2:00:00”. In Blake’s mind I can see that it’s the honest countdown time now. Cindi and I jointly breathe a huge sigh of relief.

It’s fifteen minutes later. And Blake is knocking at the door of our top-two-story penthouse apartment.

“Mr. Warren.”

“Mr. Beg.”

“Not really, but the truth is complicated. Oh, um, Cynthia wanted to be locked up so that she could, ah, express herself without hurting you.”

I step aside just in time for Cindi to nearly tackle him to the floor with a huge hug.

“YOU ASS!” she shouts in his face, “You are officially not allowed to kill yourself for me. Do you understand? I’m still not ‘in distress’, our little playacting from last night notwithstanding. You are NOT fucking allowed to fall on your sword.“

“Well,” replies Blake, “I’m still not sure I’m really talking to you.” He’s beginning to start the initial sequence of the code.

“Don’t bother with the code,” I laugh, “or would you like me to quote you a complete transcript of your last coded conversation? Let me see, I think it started with ‘Are you okay?’.”

“Blake, I told him not to do it this way. I told him to bring you in at the beginning,” she turns to me, “Damn it, I told you!”

“You told me. And you were right. Can we hurry? The clock is ticking. Blake, this whole scheme is an open book. Ask us anything. Just, please, please, don’t kill yourself.”

“First of all, give me the combination to this bike lock.”

“2-4-8-3.”

Blake releases her. “Okay. Now, who the fuck are you?”

“Short answer: I’m a twelve-thousand-year-old psychic spirit that inhabits people. I was born a human being, but haven’t been truly human for a long, long time.”

“And how did you meet Cynthia?”

“Blake...fuck, I can’t lie to you. It’s too risky. You’re too good at this. Promise me you will let me finish at least.”

“I’ll try not to judge.”

“The Amazons were a creation of my enemies, the so-called “Greek Gods”. I thought the woman warriors were all dead and gone more than three thousand years ago. Then Cynthia revealed herself to Air Marshall Prestridge in Crete when she got her powers. And that’s when I discovered the Amazons still existed. I came up with a plan to destroy, or at least expose, those bastard “gods” using Cynthia and the Amazons. It took me from 1941 until, what, last August to trap Cynthia. Honestly Blake, my intent was to turn her into a brainwashed pawn and force her to execute this sting as the bait.

“But something unexpected happened, Blake. I fucking fell in love with her. Honestly I would have called off the plan if she insisted, but as soon as I told her about it she insisted on DOING it.”

“So when she first told me about you—”

“The day of the ten second record takedown? The broken arm?”

“Right. Was she your brainwashed puppet at that point or your girlfriend?”

“Damn, Blake. She was in love with me, but I was still brainwashing her. For what it’s worth I was in denial. Not even 24 hours after that I had arranged a set-up that would have had her gang banging a bunch of punks. My intent was to test the waters of her loyalty. Would it extend to whoring herself out? Given that that is exactly what I was going to need her to do.... Given that that is exactly what she did last night.... But never mind that. I aborted the gang bang at the last second. I couldn’t go through with it.”

While Blake is trying to digest that, Cindi does a quick date calculation. “What? So that’s what the thing in the park was all about? Is that why you so morose the whole afternoon?”

“Please, Cindi, I feel bad enough—”

“No, you don’t get it!” I don’t get it; she’s wearing a grin like the kid who actually did get the pony for Christmas. “YOU DIDN’T DO IT! You loved me even then! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!” She can barely restrain herself. Her hug might have broken bones on a less solidly built man. Even so, it was more than a bit painful.

“Can I put the lock back on you before you kill me?”

“Sure. Blake, are you okay with that?”

“Um, yeah. Okay, I’m convinced. If your mind-control mojo is powerful enough to make her do that, then I don’t stand a chance anyway. You’re for real.”

“Blake, the asshole didn’t TELL me he loved me until almost a week later. And he had to watch me get raped by my arch-nemesis before he could admit it. I mean, talk about ‘emotionally distant’.”

“Wait. You were raped by Ares?”

I’m mortified. “It was my stupid fault. I had to find a way to keep Ares from interfering with the sting, and my only other alternative would have been to kill him.” I look into Cindi’s eyes. She’s putting on a pretty brave front, but inside she’s reliving it. Not good. “I should have killed him.”

Blake shakes his head. This is getting to be a bit too much. “Okay, I don’t think I want to know.”

Now Cindi steps up. “Blake, we’re almost down to an hour and a half left. Can you please stop your little personal self-destruct sequence now? Or are you going to make us watch you die?”

“Sorry, Cynthia, I have to ask a few more questions. For instance...What the hell are you trying to accomplish here?”

“Shit. This might take the whole 90 minutes. Let me start with when they first appeared....”