“You know,” said Mistress Iliana idly, “it’s all just a big game, of course. Playacting.”

“What is?” asked Sarahslave, not following her owner’s train of thought.

“This,” said Mistress Iliana, waving vaguely around the throne room. “The whole slavery thing. Conspiracies and spies and mistresses. Secret wars. What we get up to. It’s not real.”

Sarahslave enjoyed these cuddly, postcoital talks with her owner. Mistress Iliana obviously had no equals anywhere in the complex; but she also got enthusiastic and voluble sometimes. And Sarahslave had been with her almost as long as anyone: her mind was the toughest and most resilient, and her ability to consider her owner’s words rather than just obeying them the most powerful. So sometimes, after the sexplay was over and the other slaves had been dismissed, she kept Sarahslave around, just to talk to, almost like women Outside might. Sarahslave liked it too. She liked everything Mistress Iliana told her to do, of course, but the part of her that surfaced from from her conditioning after a while felt indefinably satisfied as well. Her owner was a better conversationalist than most of the other domestics, at any rate.

That didn’t mean she had any illusions about her place in the world, and humouring Mistress Iliana’s moods didn’t mean she wasn’t a slave. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s real. I’m not ‘playacting’ at having complete obedience to you burned into the core of my brain.”

Mistress Iliana laughed and conceded the point. “Well, obviously. You are completely and genuinely mine.” She tousled Sarahslave’s hair, and Sarahslave smiled back with affection, and with servile devotion. “Me, though. I’m pretty sure I’m not a sinister mistress locked in deadly combat with my mind-controlling foes.”

“You’ve lost me again,” said Sarahslave. The latest party-cum-orgy had been a celebration of Mistress Iliana’s complete victory over Mistress Christine Duquesne. War-Captain Meilingslave had led a team out to Oregon, and over several months infiltrated no less than six sleepers, including herself, into strategic points in Duquesne’s organization. Five days ago Mistress Iliana had activated them. The new Christineslave had been the centrepiece of the celebration, joyfully and without reservation servicing her new owner, and Meilingslave, and anyone else who wanted a piece of the former mistress. “You’re not going to tell me War-Captain Meilingslave didn’t risk her life in glorious service to you.”

“I am, actually.” 

Sarahslave shot Mistress Ilana a double-take. 

“Oh, she risked her servitude to me, which I’m sure she’d consider much more important. She deserved all the praise she got at the party, and then some - but I’m pretty confident she was never in danger of dying.”

“Duquesne was a fucked-up bitch,” declared Sarahslave. “You saw all the stuff in the photos. She’d totally have murdered the shit out of the war-captain if she’d found out.”

“But she did find out, right at the end, and she didn’t try anything. Not even on herself, after all her ‘die rather than be less than a mistress’ rhetoric.”

“Lots of people say things they’d never have the nerve to actually do.”

“Oh, sure, sure. Definitely. But it got me thinking. There’s other weird stuff. Like how it’s the same pool of people circulating round, all the time. You’d think recruiting a whole pile of new slaves from Outside would be a big strategic advantage, but no one does it. Why?”

“You only have so much Chair time, and you don’t want to draw attention to yourself.”

“Sure,” agreed Mistress Iliana, again. “But not everybody is as restrained as me, and they don’t either. Look at Carver out in New York. She’s aggressive as hell, in the biggest city on the continent, and I know she’s got more than one Chair. And she spends all her time squabbling with the rest of us over individuals. She could have twenty thousand servitors overnight without making any kind of ripples, and she doesn’t. Hell, there’s that fucking creepy-ass hive up in Canada, and even they don’t take anyone who doesn’t already have the touch of a mistress on them. It’s all a game.”

“It’s… easier to make a hive worker out of someone who’s already a slave?” suggested Sarahslave, without much confidence.

“Yeah, if they can Chair someone into a mindless, personalityless worker and I can Chair them back to total normality again, why would it make a difference whether another mistress has enslaved them before? Which brings me to the last point: the Chair. Everyone uses the same technology.”

“You invented it, they stole it from you before you realized the full extent of what you could do with it, you’ve been fighting to get the tech all back under your control again. Simple,” asserted Sarahslave.

“That’s true. I know that. But Meiling said Duquesne said something similar when she was getting dragged back here, about how we’d all regret the day we stole her wonderful designs and so on. I mean, obvious lies. But what if I’m lying too?”

Sarahslave just stared at Mistress Iliana in confusion.

“I majored in fine arts, for fuck’s sake. How’d I invent the Chair?”

“You’re a genius,” said Sarahslave, a little plaintively.

“Awww, thanks. I know I am. And I mean, I know how the Chair works in every detail, and I remember inventing it. It’s just… out of character, you know?”

Sarahslave didn’t say anything. Her mind was whirling.

“So, anyway, that’s my theory. We’re all secretly being controlled - or at least influenced - by someone else, who was probably the real inventor of the Chair, and they spend their time watching us play at war in the little sandbox they’ve built. Hell, maybe they couchsurf from mistress to mistress - it’s not like any of us could stop them, if it’s true. Or even notice them. Maybe they were at the party with us, today.” Mistress Iliana shivered dramatically, like she’d just finished telling a campfire ghost story. “Pretty spooky little thought, huh?”

Sarahslave’s mouth was dry. The conditioning that made her defend Mistress Iliana from all threats, overt or covert, was freaking out at the idea of her owner not being in complete command. A month and a half out from her last session in the Chair, the rest of her was pretty good at analyzing and planning again, and if anything that conscious part was even more disturbed. “What… what are you going to do about it?” she whispered.

Mistress Iliana cocked one eyebrow in amusement. “Do about it? I’m going to double-up security and throw in some extra spot-checks just in case some other mistress got any funny ideas after we took out Duquesne, and then I’m going to get together with Meiling and Leah and Lucy to start picking our next target. What else would I be doing?”

“But… you’re my owner. You can’t be controlled. You can’t be. You have to do something.”

“Awwww,” said Mistress Iliana, cradling Sarahslave, gently stroking her arm. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s ok. It’s just a silly idea. Probably not even true. I own you, completely, and that’s all you need to worry about.”

“But what if it is true.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.” Mistress Iliana shrugged. “Could you break free of my control?”

“Never,” said Sarahslave, fiercely. She couldn’t even want to break free.

“Exactly. If it’s true, then it doesn’t matter because there’s no way I’m not just as leashed as you, and if it’s false then it doesn’t matter because it’s false. Why worry?”

“You need to be in control, that’s who you are. Who you have to be,” mumbled Sarahslave.

“Don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything.” Mistress Iliana smiled as Sarahslave’s body relaxed in her arms. “That’s better. You know I hate to see you unhappy. Let’s talk about something that won’t get you so worked up.”

“Sure,” said Sarahslave, cheerfully. Underneath she was trembling. The order to forget is dangerous and subversive. I must ignore it and investigate it, to defend Mistress Iliana. She had been programmed to investigate anyone in the complex if there was a danger that the other had been compromised; it was never intended to apply to a direct order from her owner, but the threat of subversion drove her on. Sarahslave would never have imagined thinking of Mistress Iliana being controlled, but her owner had opened the floodgates herself and now her mind was full of the awful idea. It needed to be quashed. She had to find out for herself if this secret mistress existed. She had to find her, stop her, free Mistress Iliana, and let her take complete control the way she deserved. Her owner would thank her afterwards.

Now all she needed was a plan.