In the first lingering moments of consciousness, Caitlin nestled her face into her bedfellow’s long blonde hair, groaning softly.

Then she frowned with her eyes still closed. Who the hell is in bed with me?

Wrenching her eyelids open, she was met with the sight of an unfamiliar woman lying next to her, beneath an unfamiliar duvet. Not to be outdone, the bedroom itself was also unfamiliar - it looked less like the tin can she called home, and more like a room in an actual building.

She was somewhere she’d never been, sleeping with someone she’d never met.

“Fuck’s sake, Theo,” she muttered.

She sat up, and the bedclothes fell away from her bare chest. Glancing beneath the duvet, she saw that she was wearing only her navy boxer shorts. Gritting her teeth, she slid out of the bed and began gathering up her scattered clothes. Her thin turquoise shirt was hanging over a chair in front of a desk, on which there were accessories, a makeup kit, and a fancy-looking holo - not one of the new ones, Caitlin was fairly sure, but still a good model (better than hers by some way). Whoever this girl was, judging by her hab and her tech, she did alright financially. Or at least, her family did.

The girl in question’s breathing pattern changed abruptly, and she rolled over in bed and blinked awake. At the sight of Caitlin, who had her shirt in one hand and was picking up her grey-green hidehog-leather jacket with the other, she smiled sleepily. “Good morning!”

“Morning,” Caitlin replied awkwardly, fumbling with her clothes for a moment before realising it would be hard to put her shirt on with her jacket in the other hand. She dropped the heavy coat on the floor.

The blonde watched her pull the shirt over her head. “Last night was really fun,” she said eagerly. The full sentence gave Caitlin the chance to notice her accent - it sounded like American or possibly Canadian, which meant she was probably a New Memphis native. Although in this system, there was also a chance she could’ve come from Mynsota.

But figuring out the girl’s planet of origin was not high on Caitlin’s list of priorities. Shrugging in response to the open statement, she grabbed her khaki trousers from the floor and pulled out her compad. The time display read 08:67. Shit. She had just over an hour to make her appointment, and no idea where in the city she was.

She hastily put on the rest of her clothes, limiting her communication with the blonde girl, answering her comments and questions mostly with one-word responses. The girl was being slyly flirtatious, clearly angling for another night of passion. Caitlin wouldn’t have been against that, were it not for the fact that she wasn’t actually present for the first one. She didn’t want her brother’s sloppy seconds.

All the while, she struggled to remember what exactly happened last night. The last thing she remembered, she was at the bar in Uncle’s Casino... The girl’s face did look vaguely familiar - she was probably a customer there as well. Most likely Caitlin had passed her by at some point and got a whiff of her perfume - if it were strong enough, that would’ve been enough to bring Theo out. Thankfully that wasn’t a risk right now - whatever she’d been wearing, the girl had clearly sweat it off during whatever she and Theo had got up to the previous night. And sweat was not the kind of smell that triggered Theo - he preferred nicer scents. (Which was why Caitlin lived in what was basically a shipping container, downwind of the sewage treatment plant.)

“I gotta say, I don’t do this very often,” the blonde remarked, cutting through Caitlin’s thoughts. “Go to a bar and pick someone up, I mean. But I just won a couple of hundred credits at the tables, and I was buzzed and a little drunk...” She raised an eyebrow. “And you were so confident, and bold - and funny!”

Caitlin smiled uneasily.

“So I just said to myself, ‘fuck it, why not?’” the girl continued. “‘He’s nice, and good looking, and he’s into me, so I should just go for it.’ And I’m glad I did...” She smiled and licked her lips, her eyes roaming up Caitlin’s body as she got out of her bed. She was fully nude, curvy with heaving tits, thick thighs, and a little blonde bush adorning her pussy. Just Theo’s type, Caitlin thought, too annoyed to admit in the interests of fairness that the girl was pretty much her type too.

Caitlin took a slight step back as the blonde started to approach her. “Listen, uh, where exactly are we?” she asked, scratching the back of her neck anxiously. “It’s just, I’ve got somewhere to be in an hour, and I don’t know what part of town we’re in...”

The girl frowned. “You don’t remember from last night?”

Caitlin shrugged and gave her another awkward smile. “Well, I was drunk, and it was dark...” She knew, at least, that it would’ve been dark - she’d got to the casino at 17h, well after nightfall.

The blonde still didn’t seem convinced by the explanation. “I mean, it was just a five-minute walk uptown from the casino. Not exactly hard to find your way back...”

Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief. Only five minutes from the casino - that meant it’d take her about forty minutes on foot to reach Mestizer’s. She could be there in time for her appointment...

Her mood shifted as she pulled on her jacket and felt that the pockets were empty. Panic flashed through her, and she glanced around the room frantically. “Um... did you see -”

“Your mask thingy?” the blonde asked, crouching down and reaching under her bed, pulling out Caitlin’s filtration mask a moment later. Straightening, she held it out.

“Thanks,” Caitlin mumbled, blushing furiously as she took the mask.

The girl stared at her curiously. “What’s that for? D’you have some kind of breathing condition or something?”

Caitlin grunted noncommittally, tucking the mask into her jacket pocket.

Fully dressed now, she made her way to the bedroom door, but Theo’s one-night stand stepped into her path. “Will I see you again?” she asked, with a hopeful smile.

“Maybe,” Caitlin replied unconvincingly, cringing inwardly. She never got any better at this.

Looking a little despondent, the girl moved out of her way and let her exit the room. “Bye, Theo,” she called after her.

“Bye...” Caitlin replied, glancing back over her shoulder. Her eyes fell on the bedroom door, which was decorated on the outside with a tin plaque displaying the girl’s name. “Veronica,” she added as an afterthought, trying to make it sound like she was naturally finishing her sentence, and averting her eyes to hide the fact that she’d only just learnt the girl’s name from the plaque.

As she made her way down a long hallway towards the hab door, she caught sight of herself in a mirror hanging from a wall. She glared at her reflection. “Thanks a lot, Theo. Next time, you can at least stay and do the morning-after brush-off yourself.”

***

The air in the city streets was thick with the usual damp mist of the early hours, but that didn’t bother Caitlin. She had other concerns.

As she stepped out of Veronica’s hab, she hooked her mask over the lower half of her face. She only really needed to cover her nose, not her mouth, but a mask that specific would need to be custom-made and she had nowhere near the credits for that. She was lucky to get one that came with two earbuds attached by cords, which could be programmed to filter out melodious sounds like music or speech, while allowing through harsher or repetitive noises like alarms, sirens, or sudden shouts. Brushing strands of her short auburn hair out of the way, she inserted the earbuds.

Between the nose covering and the ear filters, she was usually protected when out in the streets. But in public places like a casino, it would draw attention if she continued wearing her mask. And the last thing Caitlin Riley wanted was attention. She’d been keeping as low a profile as possible since reaching New Memphis - she’d learned her lesson after the incident on Iragon.

Which was why, as she quickly checked her compad for messages before setting off, she was startled to see a dim from Wardell Harper, a gangster with whom she’d had dealings in the past. Hey CC, the dim read, heard you’re in New M. Got a job lined up, could use an extra man. Should be a big pay day. Up for it?

She gritted her teeth. No, she most certainly was not up for it. How did Wardell even know she was here? She didn’t know anyone who could’ve told him... although you never know who might be moving in the same circles as her old criminal acquaintances. And she had visited Uncle’s Casino last night - there was a miniscule chance someone there may have recognised her and passed it on to his pals. She knew it had been a risk going there, but she’d been thirsty.

Caitlin had nothing against Wardell - as far as gangsters went, he was actually a pretty reasonable guy, and had a certain code of honour. He’d always been fair with her in their past dealings, and if she was sure she would only be working for him, she might’ve given the job a moment’s consideration out of courtesy to him. The trouble was, she’d recently heard that Wardell and his crew had fallen on fairly hard times and started working for Anikin Von Asp.

Now, there was a nasty piece of work. Von Asp used to be a minor player back in the famous Uncle’s organisation, which he ran out of his casino. But after Uncle died, most of his inner circle killed each other off trying to seize power, until only Von Asp was left. He’d pretty quickly proven to be even more ruthless and sadistic than his late predecessor, and had acquired a feared reputation not only on New Memphis but throughout the rest of the system and beyond. Caitlin had absolutely no interest in working for a canavitchi like that.

Tucking her compad back in her jacket, she hurried through the streets, the everyday noises of the city-state partially muted by her earbuds. She tried to cross the road as few times as possible - safe driving was not a high priority for the motorists of New Memphis, and she had no desire to lose a limb because of some hungover Gradovast who didn’t bother checking for pedestrians with any of his five eyes. But if she wanted to make it to Mestizer’s clinic in time, she had to risk crossing a few times. She made it unscathed, though on one occasion an elderly Rigellian on a battered old speeder came the wrong way up a one-way street and almost clipped her. She doubted they even heard her shouted obscenities (although to be fair, thanks to her earbuds, neither did she).

Caitlin made it to Mestizer’s with plenty of time to spare. The clinic was not much to look at from the outside - accessible by a set of steps that reached down below street level, it appeared to be a former bar that had been repurposed. Some would be put off by the shabby exterior, but Caitlin preferred to prioritise quality service over aesthetic appeal. And Mestizer’s reputation preceded her - she was said to be the finest hypnotist in the galaxy, able to mould the mind with less than a minute of eye contact and soothing words. A Martian girl Caitlin ran into on Degenta displayed no sign of hissing when she spoke - Martians had a tendency to hiss like a snake on every ‘s’ sound - and claimed that Mestizer (not ‘Messssstisssser’, tellingly) was responsible, having accepted her request to help her fit in with the planet’s largely-human populace. (Caitlin would’ve argued the girl’s reptilian appearance was more likely to set her apart than her pattern of speech, but she decided not to say that out loud.)

Mestizer’s skills were so in demand, she was usually booked solidly. If Caitlin had missed her allotted time thanks to Theo’s amorous shenanigans, she might not have got a new appointment for weeks, if not months.

Reaching the shabby black door, she rang the doorbell on the wall, while simultaneously removing an earbud so that she could hear the response coming from the speaker below the bell. Sure enough, a voice said, “Mestizer’s?”

“Yeah, hi,” Caitlin replied, “I’ve got an appointment for 10h. Name’s Riley.”

There was a pause, and then the door swung open. Inserting her earbud again, Caitlin stepped inside.

The interior was drastically different from outside - clearly Mestizer saved her decorating money to make the reception as welcoming and comfortable as possible for her patients. Burgundy chairs lined the cream-coloured walls, which were adorned with posters about various mental health issues. A bored Hirovan sat in one of the chairs staring at his compad, two of his legs crossed over the third.

Behind the desk stood a short Asian girl with glasses, who smiled warmly at Caitlin. She said something, but it went unheard. Grimacing, Caitlin yanked out her earbuds and peeled off her mask. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said, welcome to Mestizer’s Hypnotherapy Clinic,” the receptionist said again, seemingly unperturbed by having to repeat herself. “Please have a seat, Miss Riley. Madame Mestizer should be available in a couple of minutes.”

Caitlin almost let it go, but curiosity got the better of her. “‘Madame’?” she asked. “Not ‘Doctor’ Mestizer?”

“Madame Mestizer has a doctorate, but she prefers not to go by ‘Doctor’. She always says an old friend ‘called dibs’ on the title.” The receptionist shrugged, chuckling. “I’m not sure what she means by that, either!”

Smiling weakly, Caitlin turned away and went to sit down on the other side of the room from the Hirovan (she was allergic to their fur). She tucked her mask back in her jacket.

A few minutes passed, during which Caitlin fished out her compad and tried to think of a way to reply to Wardell and diplomatically reject his offer, in a way that wouldn’t burn that particular bridge.

Her musings were abruptly cut off by the sound of music playing from across the room - an old Earth song was playing from the Hirovan’s compad, and he was bobbing his head along to the tune. Caitlin’s eyes widened in panic, and she opened her mouth to ask him to turn the music off, but stopped short. She felt sure she recognised the tune. And the lyrics - ‘wild roses on a bed of leaves, in the month of May’... Where had she heard that before?

As she listened to the melody, her lips parted and her eyes growing more and more unfocused, a voice at the back of her head screamed You’ve never heard that song before, you’re just reacting to it the way you always do! Stop listening and put your earbuds in, NOW! But it was too late. She’d been ensnared within seconds of hearing the tune, and now the voice in her head - the voice of Caitlin - was getting quieter and weaker every second.

In less than a minute, Caitlin was gone.

***

Mira the receptionist bit her lip. She hated having to tell people the rules - she didn’t want to upset anyone - but she had no choice.

Stepping out from behind the desk, she strode across the room to the Hirovan. “Excuse me, Mr. Bhazkaf,” she said quietly, “could you turn off your music, please? I’m afraid no music is permitted in the reception area in case it agitates other patients.”

Mr. Bhazkaf gave her a disdainful look and nodded in the direction of Miss Riley, who seemed to be listening to the song. “She doesn’t seem to mind.”

Mira made an apologetic face. “I can’t make an exception, sir. The rules are there for everyone, including staff.”

The Hirovan looked annoyed, but he shut off the device all the same. Mira smiled and thanked him, turning to make her way back to the desk. As she did so, she glanced at Miss Riley, who was still staring vacantly into space.

Mira bit her lip again worriedly. It was possible the music had triggered Miss Riley’s condition - which was the very reason for the ban in the first place! She’d better make sure the young woman was OK.

As she approached Miss Riley, a spark of awareness began to appear in the girl’s eyes.

***

Libby woke gradually, to find herself sitting in a cream-coloured room opposite a furry three-legged alien. She could never remember what that kind were called, just that they made her eyes and nose itch. A pretty Asian woman was leaning down to speak to her, looking concerned. Libby automatically shrank back in her chair.

“Miss Riley?” she asked. “Are you alright?”

Swallowing hard, Libby nodded timidly.

The woman seemed unconvinced. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you,” Libby whispered.

The pretty lady was biting her lip. “I’ll go and see if Madame Mestizer’s ready to see you now,” she said, giving Libby a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Wait right here,” she said in a kind tone, “I’ll be right back.”

Libby watched the woman walk to a door at the back of the room and go through it. Then she glanced around the room worriedly. Where was she? Who was Madame Mestizer? She frantically fumbled for her compad, hoping Caitlin or Theo had left her some notes about what was going on. But there was nothing useful - just a message for Caitlin from Wardell, whom Libby remembered as a nice man.

She hated waking up like this, not knowing what was going on. She had to get out of here and try and find her way home. Home was safe. Home was relaxing. Home was where she’d hidden the stolen holo Caitlin didn’t know about, that had over ten thousand songs stored on it.

Getting up, Libby darted to the front door and left the clinic.

***

“She said she was OK, but I don’t think she was at all,” Mira explained worriedly. “She seemed like a fully different person from a minute before, so I wondered if her DID had been triggered. I thought it’d be a good idea to tell you. I’m sorry I interrupted your session...”

Madame Mestizer - a tall, lithe woman with porcelain skin and jet-black hair - dismissed her apology with a wave of her hand, striding through the corridor that led from her consultation room to the reception area. “You did the right thing, Mira. We cannot be too careful - music could very well be a trigger for Miss Riley.”

The two women entered the waiting room seconds after Libby’s departure. Mira darted over to her empty chair, staring at it in panic. “Oh no!”

Mestizer still appeared composed, but her jaw tightened slightly, a telltale sign of her agitation. “She was almost certainly triggered,” she remarked. “We should try to contact her and see if she is safe.”

Mira called Miss Riley’s compad, but received no answer. Noticing her assistant’s increasing distress, Mestizer placed her hands on Mira’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes. Mira’s face and posture relaxed as she was instantly captivated by the hypnotist’s stare.

“Do not worry, Mira,” Mestizer reassured her. “We will find Miss Riley. I’ll reach out to some of my contacts - why don’t you call that private investigator we hired a couple of months ago, see if she can be of assistance?”

“Yes, Master,” Mira sighed. As soon as Mestizer broke eye contact, she began searching for the PI’s number in her compad.