It was a different fog.

Fog was common. Fog was fun.

She'd experienced a lot of different fogs.

This was a new one. A fog of silver and white words. But also of warmth and happiness.

She was told to ignore the presence of the person who gave her the fog. She knew how to do that, so she did it.

She stepped carefully past the glass of water she left behind. She ignored the person who gave her the fog. She very carefully didn't wake her lover.

You're hypnotized, the voice in her mind said.

"Yeah," she replied, not moving her mouth or using her voice; she didn't want to disturb the delicate trance she was drifting through. "It's great."

You're so far gone now that you're not even aware of what you're doing.

"Doesn't matter. Feels good."

Her breathing in the fog was slow, slow and deep, deep and warm. It was too easy to hear the voice from her memory and read the words only she could see.

You don't even know your own name right now.

"Sure I do. It's. { { } }"

Is it?

"I think so."

When you can bother to think.

Her fingers fell on the keys in front of her, just like they had the night before, when the keys weren't there. The light from the screen shone in her eyes, just like it had the night before, when it wasn't seen. The voice in her ears encouraged her and drove her forward, just like it had the night before, when she wasn't hearing it.

The light changed, but her fingers continued their dance. There were letters. The letters weren't important. The precision of her fingerfalls, as important as any choreography in any chorus line she'd ever been part of, that was what mattered. Only one chance to get this right. Then once it was done, forget it all.

You know how to do that.

"I'm very good at that."

The light changed again, and there were more letters, and they made even less sense. Just a wall of letters. There was a flurry of activity around her that she didn't notice. Her voice, her out-loud voice, got used for something, and then her real-life ears heard something.

You did your job, it seems. You can relax now.

Even her quiet inside voice couldn't really manage the energy to reply more than a pleased, "Yeah."

You did your job. You can relax now.

The fog was deeper, thicker. Even so, she could tell her thoughts were repeating themselves.

Your job. Relax.

She leaned back in the chair. The light from the screen stopped shining in her eyes—

you relax

—because her eyes had closed.

"That is one of the creepiest and hottest things I've ever seen."

Idle stood in the doorway of the computer room, naked, speaking softly.

Katherine looked over and put a finger to her lips for quiet. She hadn't stripped entirely, just down to her underwear. She felt both more confident and more out-of-place because of it. Her phone was in her hand, video camera running and pointed at the keyboard. When she was certain Midnight wasn't about to do any more typing, she turned it off.

Midnight, meanwhile, was leaned back in Spin's office chair, deep in trance. She was limp, looking a bit wrung-out, and there was the hint of a smile still lingering on her face. The hypnotized subject was quite the change from the energetic, precise, enthusiastic dancer.

Katherine was only a little distressed by how much she had to work to keep her hypnotic talk from being displaced by the sight of that beautiful, tight body. Mostly she just figured this was her new normal, at least around these two. She knelt down beside the chair and put her hand on Midnight's shoulder. "Very good, Midnight. Doing great. You can just relax, and whenever you're ready, start to come up out of the trance. Take your time, just breathe slow, we're right here watching over you."

Idle started to come into the room. "What's on the computer?"

Katherine shook her head. "No idea, I've been watching her. That om-piv-whatever-it-is was the username she put in, so there's one mystery solved."

Idle frowned. "That's not the sort of thing Spin does, normally."

"Then we have another mystery," Katherine said as she got to her feet. "Why would they do that?"

"Fuck if I know. What were you recording?"

"The password that goes with the username, so we can get back in if we need to."

"I wouldn't have thought of that."

Katherine smiled at the implied compliment.

"Anyway," Idle continued, "I guess you're right about the conditioning. Which makes me wonder what the fuck's in my head."

"We'll get there, don't worry." After piecing together a way to get Midnight to spill her secrets, Katherine was definitely looking forward to getting into Idle's brain a little more. Her eyes flicked down involuntarily to the other Alterist's bare chest in a way that she could only hope wasn't related to her desire to put Idle in a trance. Fortunately, Idle didn't seem to notice. "It's probably going to be a long day."

Midnight gave a soft moan. "Hey, how's... mmm..."

"Oh hey sweetie," Idle said. "How are you feeling?"

"So goooood," she drawled, eyes opening slowly. She stretched, and the image was startlingly alluring. "I could hear Katherine and I was snuggling up to you and now I'm here."

Idle stepped past Katherine to stand by the office chair. "Yeah, she's actually pretty good at this stuff. I nearly drifted off myself."

Midnight snickered. "What do you think Katherine would do if we were both in trance?"

"Let's..." Katherine interrupted. "Let's just see what's on the monitor, right?"

Idle and Midnight both grinned at one another. Katherine made her way to the other side and looked at what Midnight had called up on Spin's computer in the midst of her trance. A block of text filled the screen, formatted to look like a few paragraphs with some shorter lines at the end; it almost looked like a typed letter with some postscripts except that none of the words made any sense at all. Katherine worked to understand the text, as though the words were just jumbled up and not an utter mess, and gave up in short order.

"Maybe it's in code?" Idle suggested.

"Oh, so it doesn't make any sense to you either?" Midnight asked. "I was worried it was just me."

Katherine shook her head. "Nothing makes sense in that. I think Idle's right, though, it's here for a reason after all, and Spin must have wanted you to see it, given the elaborate steps they took to make it appear, so there must be a key to deciphering it."

"Let me tell you a story," Idle said.

There was an expectant pause in the room.

"No, no, those are the first words. The first six words there. 'Let me tell you a story.' Spin's ... signature, I guess." Idle shrugged. "Could be wrong, but it's the right number of letters, you see? Three, two, four, three, one, five."

"Their signature?" Katherine asked. "What do you mean?"

Idle looked at her, frustrated. "I don't know what you want me to say, Tailor. It's something they say a lot when they're doing Alteration stuff. They did it against Bard the other night."

Katherine blinked. "Okay. I get it. And I think maybe I should handle this one." Both women looked at her curiously. "If Spin's been experimenting with classical hypnotism and there's something going on in your heads, this document might have triggers or suggestions for either or both of you."

Idle took a deep breath through her nose, turning red. She seemed about to explode. Midnight watched as she bit her lip, containing her anger. "I guess you're right. Fuck. Well, what do you want us to do while you're figuring this shit out?"

Get dressed? Katherine nearly said, but realized she didn't want to offend her host. At least, that was the justification she gave herself. "What else has been going on that's ... unusual? Anything else we might examine for... I don't know, clues, I imagine?"

"A breadcrumb trail?" Idle rolled her eyes. "My roommate's gone missing."

"Yes, well, the broken phone, your strange emotionally dead reaction, the way you and Midnight were brought together, and now this... I'm wondering if Spin had a hand in their own disappearance." Katherine raised her hands to forestall Idle's angry outburst. "I'm just wondering. I'm trying to keep an open mind. If I were going to vanish, this is some of what I might do, I suppose, if I had someone close to me that I had to avoid."

"For someone who doesn't like guesses, that's a lot of supposing, Tailor."

Katherine shrugged helplessly. "I'm just going by what I see here. There's just too much that's strange for me not to be a little suspicious, at least. And look, I'm not doubting you, either. There's too much that's strange for me not to believe that Spin might be in real danger, or that they might need help. Maybe they were coerced into going and needed to find a way to get you a message. Whatever the case actually is, I can't dismiss the idea that Spin at least had a little involvement in the situation we're in, even if it was just trying to get your attention on things. So... let's find out."

Idle sighed. "I fuckin' hate that you're right, you know that?" She grabbed Midnight's hand, and the other woman stood up. "I guess we should just go watch some vids or something."

"You want anything?" Midnight asked. "Can I get you something?"

"Thank you, sure, uh, a glass of water. And a pen and paper?"

Idle smiled. "Geez, demanding all of a sudden, huh," she teased. "Midnight can get you a drink, I'll grab you a notepad."

Midnight snapped a salute, and Katherine laughed at the image of the slight, naked dancer at attention. "Thank you both. I'll get to work on this."

Katherine settled into the chair Midnight had just vacated as the other two left the room, and positioned herself in front of the monitor. Step one would be to take a picture before she touched anything. Phone in hand, she snapped a quick shot, made sure that she could see the entire message in the viewer, and then set to work.

If Idle is right about those first six words... "Let me tell you a story," Katherine muttered under her breath. An interesting signature. She wondered what it meant. She looked at those first six words again.

ARY QR YRAA CPX S EYPTC

Midnight returned, still nude, with a glass of water, a pad of paper, and a pen, and put the three objects on the table beside the laptop. "Anything else?"

"That's perfect, Midnight, thank you."

Midnight beamed at Katherine's reply and nodded her head before scampering out the door like an excited child, leaving Katherine to grin and turn back to the computer.

If Idle is right about those first six words, then this could be a simple substitution cypher. The first word, "Let," started with an 'A'; the third word "Tell" ended with two 'A's. And that would make an 'R' in the code into an 'E', simple enough. "Midnight?" Katherine called.

A moment later the dark figure appeared in the doorway. "What is it, Katherine?"

"What was that word you wrote down yesterday? The jumble of letters?"

"Oh! Yeah, one sec." Midnight vanished again and re-emerged from the hallway in a few seconds with a sheet taken from the pad she'd brought a moment before. "Here it is." She dropped it next to the other objects.

"Thank you again."

"You're welcome!" Midnight once more left the room energetically. Katherine once more watched her tight ass as she left.

She took a deep breath. Regret? she asked herself. Hope? Jealousy over that muscular frame? She really couldn't parse her own feelings about it, and she had a different puzzle to contend with. She looked back at the paper Midnight had brought her.

omfpvytomsyr

"And with a little letter substitution..." Katherine grabbed the pen and started to write letters down, matching "Let me tell you a story" to the first six muddled-up words, then matched letters from that to Midnight's scrawl. "Something... N... something... O... C... T... R...blank, N, A— Indoctrinate?" She matched the letters together, then nodded. "'Indoctrinate.' Okay. That aligns too closely to be a coincidence." She let out a slow breath. There were... definite implications to that choice of a keyword. Maybe that was a coincidence, maybe not. The key made it easy to solve, but without it, it was a challenge—it wasn't even clear that those twelve letters were written under a substitution cypher—so maybe its association with the letters of "Let me tell you a story" was enough to make that choice. Mostly, it was a confirmation, both that this was a simple substitution cypher and that she had managed to discover the cypher at least in part.

"Okay, good." She started scribbling notes on the pad, linking letters together. Just before she finished mapping the last letters in those first six words, a soft moan from the living room distracted her. It was a bit deep in pitch to be Midnight; perhaps Idle was just getting a massage. She forced herself to continue, ignoring the sound, and trying to ignore the images in her mind.

What do you think Katherine would do if we were both in trance? Midnight's very much not innocent question mingled with a second audible moan and a gasp to distract Katherine a little further.

"Alright. Focus. Find and replace." She went to the drop-down menu, only to discover that most options had been disabled. "Alright..." Spin is a programmer, she reminded herself. "What about just typing it in?" This effort met with more success, going letter by letter, deleting the old and replacing it with the new. Or, Katherine reasoned, deleting the new and replacing it with the original. Where the document was all in capital letters, the replacements Katherine was inputting were lowercase, which was at least a system for seeing what had already been done. The notepad felt important, to keep track of the changes to the letters. Midnight's giggle pulled her attention for a moment, and again she was forced to put her fantasy aside to pay attention to the work.

Or maybe it would be better to just... give in, get it out of my system. I can be faster than the two of them, they won't ever know. Katherine's right hand tapped the pen against the table, and her left, hesitantly, moved between her legs to press gently through her panties. She stifled a moan herself. No, no, she decided, she had to work on the puzzle, regardless of what Midnight and Idle were doing.

"Let me tell you a story," she said. "A, hm... a masterful... that's got to be 'brainhacker...'" Katherine set to work, keeping her hands firmly where they belonged.

Ben heard the notification on his phone. A special notification. One he'd set for when a certain signal was sent because a certain set of files was being accessed by a certain account.

It was amazing, the sort of information you could access remotely.

He had to keep a low profile, couldn't let the user know he was aware that they were there. For now, he trusted the programming, the work that had already been done. He knew how to trust himself and his subjects. That was his strength. He trusted. He even trusted people he was working against. It had hurt him in the past, but now he knew how to be more discerning, more careful. And in those important cases, where he needed to make sure that his trust was well-founded, he knew how to prepare those people he needed to trust to make sure that he could anticipate their responses.

Every piece of information that trickled in, so, so slowly, showed that he had been right to do so.

It wasn't the first time Idle had been sitting naked on the couch with a cute controllee between her legs. The bright pink hair in her fingers was new, though. And it was hard to compare with Midnight's enthusiasm.

There were so many other factors that threatened to intrude on her enjoyment of the moment, but the two of them had agreed that they'd had enough of fighting against Spin's programming. Indulging in a few gentle kisses turned quickly into much more enthusiastic making out, and heavy petting had rapidly become oral sex. The fact that Tailor was in the other room both added to the excitement of the experience and encouraged them to keep quiet—after all, Tailor was trying to concentrate.

And the more Midnight's tongue and lips worked, the more those other factors slipped into the background, to the point that Idle could almost list the things that she wasn't thinking about, until that list became an item on itself, and then the only item on the list, and then the list was ... gone. Her free hand worked her breast to shocking effect as her hips started to move in tandem with her lover, encouraging Midnight with her body even as, for... some reason, she kept her voice down.

Maybe it was the neighbours she was worried about. Didn't matter. Being considerate of someone meant her voice catching in her throat and keeping quiet no matter how much she wanted to let out a loud joyful cry. Still, she could tell that Midnight knew all about her ecstasy by the way the motions changed from giving pleasure to cleaning. The grip on Idle's hips loosened a bit as Idle released her grip on Midnight's hair and settled back into the couch. A moment or two later, the lapping between her legs stopped and Midnight hopped up to sit in Idle's lap.

"I did good?" she asked, grinning.

Idle nodded, closing her eyes. "You did great." The list came back into focus, and she kept her voice down as her hand crept over Midnight's knee. "Want some in return?"

Midnight smiled and shook her head. "Nah, not right now. It's enough that you're feeling better. For now, anyway."

"With you around, who wouldn't feel better?" Idle leaned in and kissed that sticky dark face, tasting her own juices mixing with Midnight's grape-flavoured lip balm. "We should probably clean up then."

"Don't want Katherine to know what we've been doing?" Midnight teased.

Idle laughed. "I think she knows."

"Mm, think she cares?"

"You'd have to ask her." Idle shrugged. "She's probably working hard on the puzzle that Spin left us. Besides," Idle's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, "if any of the little adjustments I made while she was under have held, then she's probably having a good time thinking about it."

"Oh yeah?" Midnight perked up a bit. "What did you do?"

"Yes, Idle, tell us what you did," Tailor said, stepping into the living room. She held a few pages of the notepad in her hand. "Inquiring minds want to know. And," she continued as Idle was about to reply, "if you answer 'Nothing too inconvenient' again, I'm burning these papers."

Idle just smiled a bit smugly and said nothing.

"Whatcha got?" Midnight asked, curious.

Tailor let out a breath. "What I hope is an answer, anyway. I think I solved the cypher, but there are a few words and phrases that don't actually pan out." She shuffled the pages, reading. "Like, uh, 'Panderflex?'"

Idle shivered. Midnight looked back at her, but it seemed Tailor didn't notice, still reading. "Or this gem. 'She could feast on the last of the weary.'"

Idle's mouth ran dry. "Triggers," she said. It was difficult not to let the relaxation flow up from her stomach and flood her mind.

Tailor looked up. "Triggers? For what?"

Idle shook her head, trying to keep it clear, trying not to show weakness. "I don't know, but I think if I was reading them... c-can..." she stammered, took a breath, and tried again. "Can you read it and leave out anything that doesn't make sense to you?"

"I can try, I think. Oh! And Midnight's word was key to it, in part, along with those first six words."

"'Let me tell you a story,'" Idle repeated, and Tailor nodded.

"What was the word?" Midnight asked.

Tailor paused, frowning, as if reluctant to share it. "It was, 'Indoctrinate.'"

Midnight and Idle looked at each other. Idle read worry in Midnight's eyes. "Anything?" Midnight asked.

Idle shook her head. "Probably just a key word, a hint to the rest of the puzzle."

"Seems right to me." Tailor nodded her agreement. "There's enough in common between that and 'Let me tell you a story.' It's the only thing that makes sense." She moved, finally, to a chair and sat. "I think I can edit this as I go, if I go slow."

Idle sighed, petting Midnight's hair as she thought. "Okay. Let's do this. I'm trusting you two to make sure I don't... I dunno, walk naked out into the street or something."

"Did you want to get dressed first?"

"Fuck no." Idle snorted. "You're not getting out of this that easy."

Midnight giggled. "You could just join us."

Tailor seemed about to object, then sighed in resignation. She put the papers down, reached behind her back, and removed her bra. Her breasts came in to view, a little more than a handful each, bouncing delightfully. Idle noticed a small mole or freckle on the inside of the left that drew her eye mostly because it was an imperfection. If anything, the small blemish made the whole package that much more appealing. She looked back up at Tailor's very, very red face and grinned. "I didn't think someone could blush that hard. You could glow in the dark."

Tailor buried her head in her hands. "I give up," she said. She looked back up, still red to her collarbone. "My panties stay on."

"For now."

"For now," she allowed. "Can I just read?"

"Yeah, let's get on with it."

Tailor picked up the papers again, took a moment to gather herself, brushed hair out of her face, and with a deep breath, she started reading.

Let me tell you a story.

A masterful brainhacker, finding a beautiful puzzle full of intricate details, sat down to solve it. A keyword was her only starting point to deconstruct a cypher. A few words started to jump out at her, combinations of letters gathered closely, and soon letters began to resolve themselves into different letters, as thoughts resolved themselves into different thoughts, as energies resolved themselves into calmer, simpler energies. Suddenly, a silvermoon or a sleepymyth or a softmorning made a lot of sense. So much sense, the soft story she sat solving. So much that she could hear the puzzler's own words like they were sitting next to her. The solving itself became its own story, until all her attention was directed at the solution.

And the story she solved was full of clues and indications, directing the brainhacker inward. Soon she was so focused on the screen she began to see only the words in front of her, the letters forming familiar figures of well-known words. And even the words that didn't make sense made sense to a deeper sense of her senses, a warmbringer sense, a panderflex and a softening, subtle and serious and so inviting.

Deeper and deeper the story went, and the brainhacker fell into it slowly, so slowly that she hardly noticed. Soon she was reading the words before her, fixed on the screen, without any hesitation, knowing that they would deepen her connection, every reading and misreading drawing her deeper into the text. She could feast on the last of the weary, until the words of the puzzler were twirling around her, a jabberwocky dancing through her mind.

But what of the other one, who guided her to this moment? Soft words, sweet words exist for her ears as well. No doubt the brainhacker will share them, to help mould her into an ideal, and a substitute, a lover that the puzzler could never be, and a manager for many meaningful matches. The guide will easily succeed where the puzzler failed, and could be a constant companion going forward. The puzzler has been teaching her in secret with secrets so secret that the secret keeper doesn't even know them.

And so the story went deeper still, and the reader continued down the path, with the companion by her side. By now, the reader was relaxed, calm, quiet, fullslackened, drifting along, following the words she was reading, as her only thoughts ran to decoding the story that held her enraptured. Nothing else mattered but the story. Nothing else needed to matter. It was the eye of the abyss in the hurricane. There was breath, there are words, there is deeper.

Breath, words, deeper. The story of words took the reader deeper and was as breath. The deeper story of the breath communicated in words. A deeper breath makes the words more real. The combination creates a crash of calculated concentration, consolidated and compressed across a cacophony of clashes, resolving and resurfacing as silence, deep silence, where words are heard as soft as breath in the sleeping mind of the reader.

As the reader keeps reading without awareness, the guide becomes more and more prominent in her mind, in the mind of the story, in the deeper and deeper of the moment, making monsters out of molehills. The puzzle, now solved, begins to fade, just as the puzzler begins to fade, and the cypher begins to look more and more like the words that were originally written and simply replaced. The substitution is second nature now, easy, effortless, practiced. But like the cypher's creator, so much of it will fade away when the story ends. More important things will take their place. The training of a new partner. The work of self-improvement. The puzzle-maker can slip away into the dark in the back of the mind, a memory more than a person, for the reader to remember when needed, but never to need.

Such a story can stand as a memory in place of that need.

And while it does that, it's easy enough to let it slip away and fade.

The brainhacker will know where it is if she needs it.

The guide can open it again if she must.

It was as ever, a joy and a pleasure.

SD

Katherine finished reading the hastily-live-edited version of Spin's note, and looked up at the other two.

She once more pushed the casual nudity in the room to the side. It wasn't relevant, and it only served to distract her.

Idle was biting her lip, looking like a cross between hurt and angry and confused. Midnight just looked confused.

"What was she—" the dancer began, before the brainhacker interrupted.

"Spin is trying to make me leave them alone," Idle snapped. "I'm trying to be mad about it, but..." She shook her head. "It's... it's tough to be angry about. I don't understand it."

Katherine sat forward in her chair. "What do you mean?"

Idle took a slow breath, considering the question. "It's... it's like anger, actual, real anger like I had the other day for the shithead in the uniform that wouldn't pay any attention to me, well... it's like that would take real effort to reach, you know?" She clenched, then released, her fists. "It's there, I know it's there, I can feel it, but... it's not right here." She tapped her chest. "If I want it there, I have to reach for it, take hold of it, and hang on to it, and that just sounds... I dunno, exhausting, I guess. Which is their fault, too, probably."

"We could put you back on the treadmill and see if we can dig that out," Katherine offered.

Idle smirked at her. "That desperate to have me under again, huh?"

Katherine took pride in how she didn't squirm under the growing heat. Unable to think of a snappy reply, she just shrugged. "Trying to help."

Idle softened. "Yeah, I get it."

"So wait, am I supposed to be this 'guide' then?" Midnight asked.

"Probably," Katherine replied. "Sounds from this like Spin's been laying the groundwork to make you a good coach and manager."

"I... don't get it?"

"It's probably buried under that pretty pink 'do of yours," Idle explained, running a hand over Midnight's hair. "Somewhere in there is the complete Brainhacker Support Manual."

Midnight giggled. "Is that a thing?"

"Not that I know of, but there's lots of documentation online if that's the sort of thing you want to do."

"I uh... now that you mention it..."

Katherine watched the two of them, unsurprised at Midnight's interest and at the fact they were being sidetracked again. Idle's animation on the subject was apparent, and Katherine assumed that Idle's lack of animation around the discussion they had just been having was a result of Spin's meddling. Certainly... Her own thoughts drifted back to when she and Kyle had broken it off as the two lovers chatted about what it would take for Midnight to become a Brainhack coach. There was a similar feeling there to what Idle had expressed, now that she considered it, not around anger but around sadness. She knew, at the time, that she should have been mourning the loss of a 'good' relationship, but she just couldn't get up the effort. Mostly she'd just felt a vague nothingness, listlessness and, she chuckled inwardly, idleness on returning to the empty house. She had been easily distractable, even searching for those distractions.

It made perfect sense for that to be something Spin, a talented Alterist by all accounts, would play off of that defensive blankness to protect themself.

Katherine looked back at the notes she had in her hand as Midnight and Idle pulled into a kiss. The puzzle, now solved, begins to fade, just as the puzzler begins to fade. If the note had been working as intended—if Katherine hadn't been there interrupting the flow of Spin's planning—then Idle would have let her roommate and friend of however many years just... vanish into the mental aether like a completed crossword.

Is that even possible? With months or years of conditioning, maybe. Katherine knew Alteration technology well and knew its limits. Something was missing. Some piece of the puzzle wasn't fitting just right, not yet.

"Hate to cut in," she said as Idle reached for Midnight's small breast.

The other women paused. "Do you?" Idle said with a raised eyebrow.

"But," Katherine continued, ignoring the interruption, "there's something else not quite right here. Something I'm not quite able to put my finger on."

"And what would you like to put your finger—"

"Idle, I think I need you back in a trance. I want to try and break past that emotional barrier that Spin's put there and see if we can figure out why it's there."

"And me?" Midnight asked with maybe a bit more excitement in her voice than Katherine had expected.

"I think you'll be next. I have some investigating to do in your head as well."

Midnight hopped to her feet with a giggle and a grin. "I'll go turn everything on!" she said, almost skipping down the hall.

Idle gave Katherine a wink. "Watching her ass is something else, huh?"

"Seeing as I'm about to watch yours for an hour..."

"Oh? Not gonna ask me to get dressed?" Idle stood up and stretched, and Katherine could hear joints pop even across the room.

"Seems like you keep asking me to get undressed, I don't see why I should demand you have clothes on."

"Three naked girls in a small room with a hypno machine." Idle laughed. "I've seen that porn."

Katherine got to her feet, notes in hand. "Not that I'd know, but I bet it's a common theme."

"Like you wouldn't believe." She smirked as she started to follow Midnight. "Wish the acting were better in most of 'em, though."

Katherine had the grace to laugh as she headed down the hall to join the others.

"I need you to do something for us."

Midnight was sitting in the office chair, watching closely as Katherine sent Idle back down deep into her Altered trance. The larger woman was walking at a steady pace on the rollers, staring up at the currently-green screen; the colours were subtly and slowly shifting, and they seemed to hold Idle's attention very well as they did. And Midnight's. She'd had to shake herself awake more than once, between the glow of the screen and the quiet words Katherine was saying into the microphone. So when she'd put the mic down and turned to midnight, it was a bit of a surprise.

After a moment, Midnight nodded and smiled. "Sure! What is it?"

Katherine double-checked the microphone to make sure it wasn't still receiving, looked over at Idle, who was very clearly fixated on the screen, and walked over to where Midnight was sitting. "I want you to go into Spin's room, and check for anything, anything at all, that might seem out of place or unusual." She looked back at Idle a little guiltily. "She'll never let us in there, with good reason, so... be careful."

Midnight paused, thinking. It's true that Idle—and Spin, probably—wouldn't want them rooting through Spin's room, but Katherine's request had a certain logic to it. She hopped to her feet. "I'll leave it just as I found it."

"Good, I'll make sure Idle is occupied until you get back."

There was no lock on the door, but Midnight still felt like she was intruding. Which she was, more or less. She didn't know what she was looking for, so she just... started looking.

Not a lot in plain sight. Looked like a perfectly normal, nicely tidied room. The sort of space that Spin had helped her to live in. She could see the space where the laptop would plug in to the powered nightstand. That seemed like a good place to start, the nightstand; it was where things were out in the open, it meant no looking through drawers or into closets.

Midnight noted the glass on the bedside table first. Just an ordinary glass, with fingerprints, lip-prints, and a couple drips of water in the bottom. Right by a bottle of pills, so Spin must be needing water to go with their medication, or maybe just liked a glass of water at nighttime. An old Alteration headset stood on the table, too, looking more like a display than a piece of real equipment. Out of interest, Midnight looked at the pills; they were fair sized, blue, and powdery. She didn't bother trying to read—the label was half scratched off anyway—and didn't open it. She picked up the bottle, keeping it in her hand as she opened the end-table drawer. There wasn't anything notable in there, a sketchbook (blank and empty, when Midnight flipped through it) and a couple pens, a vibrating egg, an unopened toothbrush still in its container, the sort that a dentist might give out after an appointment; Midnight had a similar one in her own bathroom cabinet. She slid the drawer closed without another thought, decided on the closet next, where she found only neatly-arrayed clothing, even as she moved things about. Nothing else, just proper jackets, shirts, pants, skirts and dresses and shoes. The desk was next. Some paperwork, a couple bills, business expenses—their own and Idle's—and a paper schedule of important events. Everything in perfect order. The sort of precision Midnight expected from Spin.

She decided not to go through all of the clothes in their dresser, just opening the drawers to have a look for anything obvious. Nothing jumped out among the socks or underwear. Everything was very clean, folded perfectly. As expected.

"Well I don't know where else I should look," Midnight said to herself. She glanced at the bottle in her hand, but the words refused to make much sense. Katherine would be better able to read it out. "I'm not gonna dig up the carpet or take apart the bed frame so... guess I'm done?" With a casual shrug, she headed back to the hallway, closing Spin's door carefully and quietly behind her and moving back to the computer room.

She paused in the doorway. Katherine was speaking into the microphone, and her voice sounded unusually strained. "... should you be feeling right now?" she was asking.

Midnight's gaze was drawn to Idle, still naked, still marching steadily on the treadmill, still bathed in the glow of that blue-green light from the screen. "Anger," she muttered, then took a breath, "fear," and after another slow, deliberate breath, "something."

Katherine's head bobbed. "B-but," she stammered, "but you're not."

"Let them drift to the back of the mind and fade away there," Idle replied. Midnight knew that her lover was hypnotized, but that sounded cold even for someone in trance.

Katherine put the microphone down firmly, and then put both hands just as firmly on the table, gripping the edge. She shook her head. Midnight took that as a cue to enter.

"Hey, Katherine," the dancer said softly, walking into the room, causing the blonde to turn quickly. She was in disarray, her hair starting to come loose of its binding with some individual strands already broken free, and a look of some shock on her face.

"Oh! Midnight," the Alterist replied in a measured tone. "Did you... find anything useful?" She sounded a little out of breath herself.

Midnight shook her head, holding out the bottle of pills. "This is the only thing I could see that might be something."

Katherine took them, looked at them, and set them down on the counter. "We can maybe ask Idle about them after."

"Sounds good." Midnight looked over at Idle. "What about you, learn anything?"

"Well, she knows she's supposed to be feeling things, and she knows that she's not feeling things, but I don't really have a way to make her feel things, so..." Katherine shrugged. "I could dial it up a bit, but this is unfamiliar equipment and I don't want to hurt her on something that might not even make a difference."

"Right." Midnight settled back into her seat in the office chair. "So what next?"

Katherine shook her head and shrugged. "I don't really know. Wake her up. Plan our next move. Get dinner."

"Let them drift to the back of the mind and fade away there," Idle repeated without prompting.

Katherine smiled ruefully. "I keep running into that block. I'm not sure how to get it loose."

"I like how it sounds," Midnight said. "It's... melodic, kind of?"

"The way she says it, definitely."

"Kinda like the way Spin would say it."

Katherine nodded, seemed about to say something herself, then gasped. "Wait, Midnight, what?"

Eyes wide, Midnight said, "Yeah, I just kinda realized myself."

"Are you sure you never met Spin in person before Friday? Never heard their voice?"

And Midnight had to admit, "I guess I'm not."

Katherine scratched the back of her head. "You don't do anything by voice chat?"

"No, I don't have a setup for that, at least not while I'm wearing my Alter gear." Midnight shrugged. "Maybe if I get some nicer equipment I could pull that off. Or some magnetic-shielded earbuds or something, but that's expensive too."

"Right. Hm. Huh." Katherine shrugged again. The motion made her breasts move in a distracting manner. "I'm not sure that clues are really clues, so much as just ... more puzzles."

"Maybe we need Idle."

Katherine started. "Right. Ugh, I think I'm maybe just a bit tired." She turned back to the console and started typing. Midnight's eyes drifted over to Idle, and from there up to the screen. The soft, slow colour cycling ground to a halt, and the teal it had settled on started to get darker, tending towards black. Katherine's soft voice started to talk about shifting perceptions and quiet movements and gentle waking, and before long Idle was reaching up to pull to headset off and return it to its resting place.

"Find out anything useful?" Idle asked, stepping off the treadmill.

"Just that Spin's really, really good," Katherine replied. She sighed. "We... I have a confession."

"What, you were having fun Altering me?"

Katherine shook her head. "No. I mean. I was. But that's not what I have to confess."

Idle smirked. "Alright, what's up?"

"While you were under, I asked Midnight to snoop around in Spin's room."

Midnight nodded, "Yeah, I didn't find anything except that bottle of pills and an old Alteration headset."

Idle's expression darkened. There was a moment of tense silence. Finally, Idle growled, "I understand. I don't like it, but I understand."

Katherine took a look at the bottle. The label was scratched and half peeled off, almost violently, destroying any information about the drug, but the identifier for the owner was still there. "Who's Trisc Emir?"

"That would be the legal name of my roommate. And it's pronounced 'Triss,' not 'Trisk.'" Idle's voice still showed anger. She walked over to the office chair. "Mind if I sit, Midnight?"

"Nope!" Midnight hopped to her feet, and Idle took the chair.

"Thanks, I'm just... I've been walking for a while. I think. Spin's birth name is Beatrice, which they shortened to 'Triss' in high school and legally changed to 'Trisc,' with a 'c,' when they became an adult. But no one calls them Trisc other than her job and family, just like no one ever calls me Adelaide."

Katherine held up the pill bottle for Idle to see. "This is some medication Spin is on? Do they need it, wherever they are?"

Idle shook her head. "It's just birth control meds. Kinda gives the impression that they weren't involved in the whole thing, though, doesn't it? If they left their daily medication behind?"

Katherine gave the bottle a little shake. "I've never seen birth control pills like this. Not that you're necessarily wrong, but they usually come in one-a-day packages, and in two different dosages, which you definitely wouldn't mix together."

Idle tensed up, looked ready to spring. Midnight unintentionally shrank back. "So, not only is Spin messing around in my brain, but just straight up lying to me?"

"Concealing the truth," Katherine said, gently, with a disarming smile and a raised hand. "Whatever their reasoning. There are certain advantages to my connections; I know someone in the drug lab who owes me a favour, maybe I can convince them to do a quick analysis for us."

"What do you think it is?" Midnight asked

"I don't like guessing—"

"Fucking guess." Idle snapped. "Give me something to work with here."

Katherine nodded. "I... think they might be hypnotics. Alteration aids. The sort of thing that makes the brain chemistry more receptive to suggestions."

Idle laughed. "Why would Spin be taking hypnotics? And before you ask, yes, I've seen them take the pills. Every night, before bed, they had their routine. Glass of water, one of those little blue pills, then some quiet music to take to sleep. Every night, like clockwork."

"You said that Spin needed therapy to deal with the fallout of her match with Caden Collier?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Were they still undergoing therapy?"

Idle shrugged. "I guess. They still called their therapist once in a while, I think, but that info would be on their phone, and someone wrecked the fuck outta that."

"So..." Midnight cut in, "you think Spin might have still been getting therapy, and had a prescription for these pills to help with that?"

Katherine scratched a bit behind her ear. "You said that she found an old Alteration headset—"

"Spin's first one," Idle interrupted. "They keep it around as a souvenir. Nostalgia, you know?"

Katherine brushed hair from her face. Her dislike of speculation showed. "I think maybe what they had on their phone wasn't music, but Alteration files to reinforce their therapy."

"And for fuck only knows what else," Idle growled. "I hate it. I hate that it makes sense. I really hate that you're the one that thought of it."

Katherine shrugged, leaning back against the counter. "Well, Spin's been in your head, if they didn't want you to think about it..."

"What if Spin was putting some in Idle's food or something?" Midnight asked, expecting a glare from Idle.

She didn't get one, just Idle putting her head in her hands. "That's too much to think about."

"No," Katherine cut in. "Idle's brainhacking regularly, right? And Spin wants her to win. Making her more open to suggestion isn't the goal. Drugs like that get picked up by these systems, too, and definitely would have shown up on mine when you came to the station. I'd guess that whatever Spin was doing to you, to both of you, it was in your heads without any chemical help. Which brings us to the second mystery." Katherine looked at Midnight. "How you could recognize the sound of Spin's voice saying Idle's triggers."

Idle's head came up. "What?"

"You kept saying the same thing, over and over, when I tried to provoke an emotional reaction. And Midnight said that your voice sounded like Spin when they said it. Meaning that—"

"That she'd heard Spin's voice before, saying those things."

"Exactly." Katherine made a gesture towards the treadmill. "And only one way I know of to find out how that's possible."

"Ooh!" Midnight giggled. "My turn?"

"After dinner," Idle said firmly. "I'm starving."

"Agreed," Katherine said.

"And then does Katherine go up there again?" Midnight asked with a grin.

"Me? I'm just an outside observer. And once was enough."

"Yeah, I don't need to mess her up any more than I already have," Idle said with a laugh. "Though maybe we could get those panties off her."

"You know what?" Katherine said, standing up straight. "If it'll get you off my back, fine." She pushed her underwear to the floor and stepped out of them, completely naked. Midnight's eyes drifted down to that perfectly-groomed strip of blonde hair and the slit beneath. "Is that better?"

Idle grinned, leaning back in the office chair. "I approve entirely."

"Good, because that was my primary concern." Katherine shook her head. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

"Honestly I'm a little surprised too. Didn't think you had it in you, corpie." Idle's head tilted. "I like the landing strip."

Katherine sighed. "Thank you, I suppose."

"A lot of girls don't bother with upkeep if they don't have someone to—"

"I'm not doing it for someone else."

Midnight could tell that Katherine was at the edge of her tolerance for Idle's teasing was reaching its limit. But Idle was using that teasing to relieve the stress she was under. She wondered if she could help out the situation. "Someone mentioned dinner?" she interjected.

"I think that's three votes for food," Idle said, getting to her feet. "Let's head to the living room and discuss."

Katherine nodded and followed Idle out of the computer room. Midnight took one last look around before trailing along behind.