When she finally came out of the trance, she screamed for at least two minutes straight. 

There were other people around her, trying to shout over her – but she didn’t hear a single fucking word of what they were saying. She was spitting bloody murder.

She might as well have blown a raspberry for all the good that it did. They had her strapped down, fully naked, in a chair, surrounded by medical equipment.

Finally, her voice gave out, and she had to catch her breath. She was dizzy from hyperventilating.

“Now that you’re done,” said the man across from her, “please refrain from doing that again, or I’ll simply have you gagged. Indoor voice will suffice.”

“Fuck you,” she wheezed.

“Not yet,” said the man, and Lillian’s skin crawled. Her eyes darted across the room, towards Bouvier, who was still wearing her dress, but in the meantime had put on latex gloves and rimless glasses. She was standing by some sort of computer desk.

“So this is what you’re doing?” Lillian asked, a knot in her stomach. “Is this how you traffic all those women? Are you gonna pump me full of drugs?” 

She couldn’t tell if she sounded angry or terrified. 

She had to try. Never back down. Never give up. There’s always a correct lie. “You know that I can be much more useful to you if you don’t do that. All that talk online? That was just posturing. Just… tell me the conditions, and I’m sure we can work something out. Bouvier told me your policy is to never waste talent. Right?”

The man sneered. “I see plenty of talent, that is true,” he said. Lillian recognized him now. Simon Berger. CFO of Lotus Industries. A recluse. An enigma. She had nothing on him.

But apparently, they had everything on her.

Never give up. There’s always a way in.

“I know I'm in no position to negotiate,” said Lillian, hating herself for what she was doing, but doing what she had to to survive. “But I’ve got a price just like everyone else – and right now you’re going to make an absolute bargain.” Her voice was shaky, and she couldn’t believe what she was saying, but this was the only way. She had to bargain for her life. She had to.

Berger smiled. It was an ugly sight to behold. It was a smile that tasted predatory and utterly arrogant, and it made her think of all the nauseating things she had read in the leaked documents. Shell companies and modified basements and off-the-books spreadsheets of good-looking young women, sorted by cup size and number of ‘uses’.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

“Recruiting you is what my wife would do,” he said. “Without a doubt. She’s idealistic like that. A woman like you would make for an excellent asset.”

He looked over at Bouvier. Bouvier was positively beaming with… appreciation, or even excitement. The sight of her made Lillian even more sick than the leering grin that Berger had thrown in her direction. She was enjoying this.

Never give up. There’s always a vulnerability.

“I’d like to talk to your wife then,” Lillian tried. She was grasping for straws, and pure instinct was driving her to be affable and entertaining. Anything to keep the conversation going. Anything to garner the slightest bit of empathy. “She sounds nice. I think we started off on the wrong foot. You’re Simon, right? I’m Lill–”

“-you’re nothing,” said Berger coldly. 

The smile dropped from Lillian’s face. Oh God. This couldn’t be happening. What the fuck were they going to do to her?

“Slave Christine, you may begin,” said Berger, and Bouvier pushed a button on the computer.

“NO!” Lillian shouted. “WAIT!”

A hum filled the room, and Lillian felt the air shift, and gravity bend, and everything in the universe made a little sideways hop, and suddenly…

She felt a sensation like an echo. A feeling in her throat. The pale memory of a word.

Had she been shouting? Had she—

“-You know,” said Simon Berger, “Between my wife and myself, she’s really the one wearing the pants, so to speak. Without her, I’d be a two-bit car salesman or hapless government clerk rotting away in obscurity. Hell, I’d probably be in prison. But Susanne saw something in me. Someone sharing the same secret depravity. I got lucky. And now I get to be the handsome accessory with the pro-forma title and all the fancy toys I want.”

Lillian listened. 

“She would have loved to have you be her eager little plaything,” he continued. “Hell, she might still turn you complicit after we’re done with you. But for now…”

He was standing close to her now. She could smell his aftershave and his sweat. He was looking at her tits, and between her legs.

Lillian let it happen. This was happening. Only this. There was no other way for things to be.

Berger smiled, and continued.

“But for now, daddy gets to play, and our favourite little Christine gets to test her new machine. Christine, do you want to monologue, too? It’s fun.”

“Of course, Master,” said Bouvier, and stepped forward and away from her workstation until she was right next to Lillian. She reached out, and gently touched the curve of Lillian’s breast with the back of her fingers.

“There’s this neurologist,” she said. “Who experienced a stroke, and wrote about the experience in great detail. She talked about how it felt to feel her own sense of self disassemble right in front of her. She was still there, but she could no longer talk, or read, and she wasn’t even able to tell where her own body ended and where the outside world began. She was a mind, untethered, still alive but entirely alien to itself. Foundational ideas of existence had become unrecognizable. What had seemed like an unshakable monument of a person and identity had been revealed as a house of cards.”

She licked her lips. “Let’s just say that I’ve been thinking about that a lot since I’ve had my own mind forever changed. And while we can’t entirely give you the stroke experience, we can most certainly break your mind wide open and make you believe whatever we want you to believe. Your brain waves are already fully aligned with the field, and once you're drugged and full plasticity has been achieved you will be clinically unable to resist us. Shaping your reality will be fun.”

Lillian listened. Yes. Shaping her reality was going to be fun, apparently.

Bouvier smiled at Berger. “It really is fun to monologue, I’ve got to admit.”

“Told you. Are we ready, slut?”

Bouvier produced a syringe and injected its contents into the small of Lillian’s elbow.

She counted down from twenty, then turned to Berger. “Now we are,” she said. “All you have to do is follow the script.”

With that, she stepped back behind the console with a spring in her step. She pushed a button, and spoke into a microphone and–

“Everything we say is true,” a loud voice filled the room, and Lillian gasped as something inside of her shifted in a strange way. 

“You will listen and believe.”

Lillian blinked.

Something had happened.

She didn’t wonder what.

All she knew was that she was listening.

Someone else was speaking, now.

“All of this is mine,” said Simon Berger, gesturing broadly around himself, at the laboratory, and at Christine Bouvier. Hollow memories of everything that had happened fluttered in the wind like wisps: Ownership. Responsibility. Intent. 

It was true. Everything he said was true. Everything here was his.

Berger reached out and – suddenly, she felt… touch. She instinctively looked down, and saw his hands groping her breasts.

“Phase 2, initiate,” said a female voice, and–

The world dissociated into mealy panes of colorless yellow, and she expanded through the sandy depths and drained out into darkness of the universe.

“You are only a mind, and you listen and believe,” said the smeared-out notion of Simon Berger that oscillated in her vision. 

“You must repeat what you believe.”

A part of the universe she recognized started moving.

“I am only a mind, and I listen and believe,” it said, automatically, and the mind that she was knew that it was true, even in the dissolving mess of the strange shapes.

“You are separate from all of this,” said the other shape. A separate shape. Not her. Not the mind that she was. Not the same lips. Not the same mouth. But–

“I am separate from all of this,” said the mouth that moved when she thought the truth. Lips, sticking together before parting and closing again. Tongue, moving. Teeth. Jaw. Air. Noise. Words. Speaking. Somewhere.

She felt it.

But she was separate from it. 

She knew that she was separate from it.

The universe moved, and more sensations touched the mind that she was.

“All of this is mine.” said the universe that spoke the truth.

“All of this is yours,” said the universe that she could feel.

And then she felt the body. She felt the touch. The universe looked down at itself, and saw naked skin draped across arbitrary curves in the space around her. Eight limbs. Two torsos. A face. Light. Shadow. Two bodies. Melting into each other. It was touching itself with a hand cupping a breast. It was dragging itself across itself with another, touching a face, then a neck, then the side of a torso and the space between legs, melting into itself, without separation. Only flesh touching itself.

She felt it.

“This body is mine,” said the universe around her that Simon Berger had been lost into.

“This body is yours,” said the lips that listened to her mind. Lips that were separate from her Lips that belonged to… him.

“You are not this body,” said the truth.

“I am not this body,” she repeated, with the lips that weren’t hers.

“You are only a mind.”

“I am only a mind.”

Yes. She knew this. She already knew that truth. There was only the universe, which belonged to him, and she was separate from it. She was only a mind. The rest belonged to him.

“You cannot change this. It is the only truth.”

“I cannot change this. It is the only truth.”

Yes. She saw how true it was. The liquid grains of the world were blending all together. Twisting and shifting and strange and all borders and distinctions arbitrary. Only one distinction was real. Only one separation was real. Undeniable. True.

She was only a mind.

“This body belongs to me,” said the truth. She felt it. She felt a body. She felt touch. She felt skin. She felt noise and sweat and a finger pushing into something tight and sensitive. The universe was touching itself.

“This body belongs to you,” said the part of his universe she could feel.

“Your mind controls the body, but the body is mine.”

“I control the body, but the body is yours,” she said, with his lips. “All of this is yours.”

She knew the truth. She understood the truth.

“You are only a mind,” said the truth.

“I am only a mind," said she.

“You exist only to make this body do what its owner desires.”

“I exist only to make this body do what you desire.”

“This body is mine and needs to obey me, and it cannot obey without you.”

“This body is yours. It needs to obey you. It cannot obey without me.”

“Very good.” The body above looked around, into the shapes beyond, connecting with ideas and unspoken words. There was a computer console buried among the sands of the universe, and another person embedded into the indistinct masses of layers and colors that made up everything that wasn’t her.

The universe that spoke the truth looked back at her.

“Listen, and believe: Nothing you were is important. Nothing you believe has ever been important. You are only a mind. Nothing else. Everything else is mine. Everything else is my property. Mine to decide over. Mine to use. Mine to command. Mine to take. Mine to sell, and fuck, and hurt, however I like. I am everything. You are nothing. You exist only to make this body do what I want it to do, and this body exists to be used. You have no other worth. No other value. No presence. You are only a mind, and nothing but an extension of my body. You are only a mind, and nothing else. Everything else is mine. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said the mind, using the lips of the body that existed to be used. The universe had told her how it was shaped, and she understood it, and accepted it, and believed it.

“Good,” said the universe that owned the truth. “Let’s go over all of that a couple of more times.”

And so it continued, and the shifting layers of everything that existed repeated the truths that her mind already knew, and she repeated the truth over and over, and every time the lips that existed to be used repeated the truth, she understood it a bit more, and it became even more clear, and more distinct, and more unshakable and undeniable.

She didn’t notice that she had been slowly waking up until it had already happened.