Kara’s curiosity was high, and she wanted to look around, but she couldn’t; couldn’t even persuade her eyes to glance to one side or the other. She could see the red light that indicated the webcam was active, and there were others, seated in chairs around it. Her awareness was enough to make that clear, but she couldn’t identify the people sat there, whether she’d seen them before or not.

(She had an uncomfortable feeling that she should recognise at least two of them. The information, she was sure, was lodged in her brain, but it was as if it was out of bounds; as if she couldn’t access everything in her mind, in the same way she couldn’t send a command to any part of her body and have it respond.)

“Gentlemen here present,” Monsieur Hofmann said, “and ladies and gentlemen watching us remotely, I welcome you to the fourteenth annual Meillures Filles graduation auction. We have a number of excellent candidates, as you can see; I will not go much further into this, as you will all have received our auction catalogue alongside the schedule and arrangements for this auction.”

Kara could hear the smugness in his voice, and found herself happy to hear it; after all, she was a total teacher’s pet, and besides she needed a man to tell her what to do. Monsieur Hofmann was her teacher, and his success here was a good thing. She hoped it would be a man who bought her; her programming said she needed a man.

She tried to explain that, but of course she couldn’t open her mouth either. She managed to emit a gentle whimpering from behind closed lips, but no more; not even Monsieur Hofmann seemed to hear her. If her fellow graduates heard, none of them could make a signal she could notice; her attention was forced by the control headband away from the others and toward their audience.

Their potential owners.

Kara needed a man, but this didn’t seem like a smart way of getting one. Part of her was screaming that this was wrong, while another voice in her head coolly reminded her that she was a dumb bitch who didn’t know what to be scared of. That second voice sounded a lot like Monsieur Hofmann.

“Without further ado, then,” Monsieur Hofmann began, “we will proceed with presentation.”

Kara heard from the audience a series of impressed grunts, gasps, and whistles. After a moment, it died down, then rose again for a moment before falling away. Then she felt something, a motionless shudder of pleasure, throb out of her headband, and she knew Monsieur Hofmann must have pressed a button on his wonderful remote control because her muscles had come alive.

Holding her head in exactly the same position, her shoulders rose, shrugging her robes off her now-bare body. She brought her arms out to either side in display while taking a single step forward, bobbing at the knee as she did so, somehow balancing on angled heels throughout a low curtsey that displayed everything about her that could be seen from the front.

Just as smoothly she rose again, falling back a step. Her arms curved gracefully inward, cupping and lifting her breasts in display before falling back to her side, standing now exactly as she had been before her own unveiling. Her body had done exactly as the headband told it, without her having any input, or even thinking about it until it was done.

This wasn’t the way she’d dreamed about being controlled, these past few weeks; as Monsieur Hofmann clicked another button on the remote, she found her lips curving into a smile, warm and inviting, both sensuous and somehow innocent. It was not a smile Kara could have produced herself.

If she was not confined to just a small part of her mind, Kara would have connected the murmurs of eager approval at each step of her unveiling to the two previous outbursts, and have realised that each had coincided with a different graduate being compelled to reveal herself and pose. As it was, even with the three remaining repetitions of the event, her thoughts drifted aimlessly without finding the link.

She stood, looking out toward the audience without registering much that was not spoken by Monsieur Hofmann, and she smiled as if she were perfectly patient, perfectly content with the situation. A sudden thought, madly disquieting, sprang to her mind, limited though it was; once sold, would she be able to discover Monsieur Hofmann’s senior partner? She had suspected it was… was…

…

More information her limited access to her own mind kept locked away from her. There was only the nagging feeling that it was important, perhaps very important. That it had mattered to the version of Kara who knew everything she was supposed to. A pulse of something that might have been hatred splashed against the boundaries locking her within her mind.

None of it had shown in her expression, but she suddenly worried that it might show in her eyes, and upset her teacher when his teacher’s pet let him down. She tried to set it aside, listening vaguely as Monsieur Hofmann’s introductory remarks concluded, and with a slightly irritated tone, he said “Your pardon, monsieur?”

A voice in the audience spoke up. “Yeah, uh, what guarantee do we have that this is properly legit?” The voice was American, she thought idly; a man probably not much older than herself. He wasn’t used to feeling the uncertainty she could hear in his voice, either.

“What would satisfy you?”

“Can you make them do something that’s not on your remote?”

“Certainly, monsieur. Again, please, what would satisfy you?”

“Uh-”

“We have a number of basic displays programmed into the remote, monsieur. I encourage you to select one or two of the ladies, and be specific in the actions they are to perform. You will not be disappointed.”

“OK. That’s cool. Uh. The Chinese - she’s Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“The Chinese chick, let’s have her motorboat one of them.” Kara’s heart leapt hearing this, not because she liked the idea - far from it - but because anyone picking someone for Dai Lu to motorboat would likely choose her, her breasts looking bigger on her frame than any of the other graduates. She would be part of the demonstration, and that would allow her to be of use to her teacher. A perfect opportunity for a total teacher’s pet.

The strange screaming in her head was louder now, but Kara couldn’t think why. If she had an answer, it was locked away in the parts of her mind beyond where she was allowed.

“Would monsieur like to select?”

“You know what? No. Let one of these other folks choose.” There was a triumph to his tone, as if this was in some way a point scored. Kara didn’t understand the point, but that might not mean there wasn’t one. As Monsieur Hofmann’s voice in her head sometimes reminded her, she was a dumb bitch. (The screaming was getting worse.)

“The redhead,” another voice said. Female this time; Kara hadn’t noticed any women in the crowd, but she supposed her field of vision didn’t include everyone seated ahead of them.

She still couldn’t turn to look.

“Very well.” There was a change in her head, like the shift in pressure as the weather changes, and Kara felt the part of her mind she could occupy shrink in even further. Thoughts came now sluggishly if at all, as if they had to struggle to reach their endpoint from wherever they started. “Dai Lu,” Monsieur Hofmann directed, “motorboat Kara.”

“Yes, Monsieur.” Dai Lu’s voice was pitched to carry, was perfectly clear, but was also an empty monotone. Kara felt disapproving. A proper student, even one who was already graduating, should be happy to help her teacher make a good impression. She wanted to frown, but her expression remained the same sensuous smile.

She saw Dai Lu approach, moving with an eerie, almost mechanical grace. She stopped directly facing Kara, perhaps two feet away, blocking Kara’s view. Despite the blank emotionlessness of her voice, Kara saw the other woman smiling with the same innocent invitation she knew was on her own face. She might not have been confused by that if her mind hadn’t been limited at the time.

Dai Lu stood with feet just slightly wider apart than her shoulders. She bent at the waist, keeping her knees straight, her butt pushing out toward the audience. Her hands came up to secure Kara’s tits and push them together, her head buried itself in Kara’s cleavage, and as her tongue flicked out she began to move, head dancing from side to side.

Kara remained still and silent. Inside she was crying out with excitement and an unexpected level of arousal; the muffled other voice inside her was screaming something, but Kara couldn’t make out any of the words. It must all relate to things outside the confines of her space within her mind.

There was an expectant silence from the audience, until the first voice spoke up again. “Is that it?”

“Monsieur?”

“Is this all they’re going to do when we’re fucking them? Sit there silent? Because you’re charging a lot more than the Realdoll people. What you’re offering has to be better.”

“Ah, I see. Kara?”

“Yes, Monsieur?” It was her voice, her lips, but it wasn’t Kara speaking. It was simply an automated response, a dull monotone not unlike Dai Lu’s. Her thoughts, her will, were irrelevant.

(And while the screaming had given way to s slow, simmering rage that seemed to ache against her boundaries, to the parts of Kara she was fully aware of that sounded pretty good, just as she had, not so long ago, fantasised about the very idea.)

“Do you feel it, when you’re used for pleasure?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“And what do you feel?”

“I like it, Monsieur. It brings me pleasure.” If Kara had been able to move, she would have nodded along with herself. This was true, even if she only discovered it was true when she heard herself say it.

“Let us hear it.”

“Yes, MonsieUHHHH!” Kara’s head snapped back, her mouth opening almost to its full extent, as the arousal she was programmed to feel when her body was used became something she could give vent to. Dai Lu’s attentions remained entirely unchanged, but Kara was still being swept rapidly along, crying out in bliss or panting for breath, occasionally giving vent to a long, needy moan.

Her head having tilted back meant she had no view of the audience, but there was something in the texture of their quiet that told her how much her cries were being enjoyed, even before the young American customer said “Damn, that’s hot.” This utterance broke whatever spell had held her watchers spellbound, and a ripple of approval and the occasional chuckle broke out.

Kara had no way to decide whether the chuckles were laughing at her or at the rich, arrogant American. The capacity for decision lay in a part of her brain she could not access.

“I should note,” Monsieur Hofmann said coolly, having to project his voice to be heard over her own ragged excitement, “that Kara does not currently have approval to cum. You’ll find that while expression of arousal is calibrated through verbal instruction, your remote control contains a toggle to determine this.

“Would you like to see what happens when I grant her approval?”

“Oh, fuck yes.” The woman’s voice again, and there was an expectant awe to it. Kara was clearly being as good a demonstration subject as a total teacher’s pet could possibly be expected to be.

The pattern of the pressure in her mind changed, and Kara suddenly found that a part of her mind that had been off-limits was now not only available but irresistible. Her consciousness spilled over into screaming orgasm and only the fact that no part of her body below the neck could move kept her upright. Her thighs were slick, dripping; she had a little wider freedom in her mind but the euphoria made her less aware than ever.

And then the source of the pleasure stopped, Dai Lu halting her attentions as abruptly as she had begun and for the same reason. The Chinese graduate moved back to her own place in the line; Kara stood, not even shaking, her body unable to even twitch, but her head lolled until the pressure in her mind changed again. Her head returned to its original position and her lips settled back into the same smile. To look at her the only indication anything had happened was the slick glistening wetness sheathing her inner thighs.

“Are you satisfied, monsieur?” You had to have as much experience of Monsieur Hofmann as Kara did to detect the sarcasm almost completely buried in his tone. Kara was sure the rude American would have missed it entirely.

“Yeah,” he said. “So long as it’s not cued to your voice, anyway.” There was something familiar about the American’s voice. Whatever in her mental boundaries had prevented recognition before now lay just inside the border of her own awareness. Kara was sure that she had held very clear opinions about this person, and that they were not positive.

Despite this, it was beyond her to hope that someone else bought her. It was not her place to wish anyone excluded from the chance to own her, if they could pay.

“At present, monsieur, I regret that it is. This will be changed to the voiceprint of each purchaser on completion of our exchange. I’m sure no lucky bidder here would want another to swipe their purchase out from under them simply by telling them to follow, would we?” There was an archness to his tone that invited amusement from the others. “Shall we start the bidding?”

*

“…HAD to have her, too,” the American was saying. “That cute Irish accent of hers…”

Naked but for her heels and her mortar board, Kara stood beside the man who had purchased both her and Dai Lu, her body giving the impression of unending patience and tolerance. Inside the screaming had evened out, had become something more like a drumming on the boundaries inside her mind. Those boundaries themselves seemed less now like a brick wall and more like rubber; at times of deep effort, she could push them out to acquire more information.

It was difficult to summon the effort, though, as very little inside the parts of her mind she was permitted was motivation to do so.

“Scotch,” Monsieur Hofmann corrected, almost absently, his attention on verifying the funds transfer.

“Excuse me?”

“Scotch accent,” Monsieur Hofmann said. “She is Scottish, not Irish.”

“Eh, whatever.” A pause. “Hey, can I make her think she’s Irish? Then she won’t even get mad!” He elbowed Kara as he guffawed; she swayed from the impact but returned to the exact same stance she’d started out in. A spike of irritation lanced through her and suddenly she remembered where she knew him from.

Emmett Theron. He’d made headlines a couple of years earlier. A fortune made in the dot com bubble had been poured into a number of other businesses, and over a three or four year timeline, each of those businesses ousted its founders over one scandal or another.

It wasn’t until the fifth time it had happened that business journalists noticed the pattern and started digging; they’d produced plenty of evidence that Theron had manufactured the scandals in order to take over, but he’d dodged repercussions when more than one AG declined to prosecute. The few companies he was a major shareholder in that hadn’t yet suffered a scandal were watching him closely, and he seemed to have calmed down, but Kara’s father was of the opinion he was just biding his time, and he’d sold his shares in the one investment he and Theron had had in common.

A cold, implacable anger seemed to enfold her. She had very much hoped to follow Monsieur Hofmann’s technology trail back to Doctor Bimbeau, who she was sure lay in the shadows along that trail. To fail in that stung, even if it was to benefit Monsieur Hofmann, even if it was to belong to a man who could tell her what to do.

There was something that seemed even worse about the man being Emmett Theron. He was, she remembered, famously unmarried; had he just been looking for a sale like this to expand his collection with?

Something in her train of thought nudged itself forward for attention. What was it?

“There, monsieur,” Monsieur Hofmann said. “As expected, your payment has cleared. If you would wait outside, please?”

“Why? What happens now?”

“What happens now, monsieur, is that your purchases will record video messages for their loved ones, which will ensure nobody will become suspicious for another half a year or so,” Monsieur Hofmann said. “You will then be able to introduce your purchases to the public - or, of course, to keep them hidden away - in whatever manner you yourself see fit.” Kara’s eyes could not turn to see, but she was confident that in any case she knew the precise thin smile of self-amusement Monsieur Hofmann would be making at that moment.

“Oh. Shit. I actually didn’t think about that…”

“Every year, monsieur, there are one or two who don’t,” Hofmann replied. “Our occasional short-notice auctions tend only to be attended by the more, ah, prepared customer.”

“Is there anything else I need to know about?”

“Yes, monsieur. Six months.”

“Six months?”

“A mental control effect can be maintained for a maximum of six months without reinforcement,” Hofmann explained. “So far as anyone can see, this is not a defect of the various techniques used; it is constant across technology like this, psionic effects, and most enchantments. We might say that the defect is in the human brain; given sufficient time it will lose its iron grip on submission.

“You should ensure your purchases spend at least a day every six months in the headbands. We have been doing this now for fourteen years; reports suggest that two or even three days at a time are needed after a decade, and it may be a week or so after two.”

“Well, damn.”

Kara had only half-listened to this, still chasing the errant thought that wanted her attention. Why was it that things you wanted to remember always took time before you could deal with them?

“It is not so bad, monsieur. Two of my staff here are under the same effect.”

That surprised Kara; she hadn’t known, hadn’t recognised any difference in the behaviour of any of the permanent staff from one another. Given how constrained her thoughts and behaviour currently were, it seemed impossible that anyone controlled could escape detection; of course, she hadn’t recognised the signs that her mother was under hypnotic control, either.

Her mother. That was a figment of memory that hadn’t been inside her boundaries before. It was as if she’d crept in because she was close enough in a stray thought that the comparison could slip in without the controls in her mind noticing that this broke a law. Dr Candace Kraft, close enough to her thoughts on her own situation because she’d witnessed her, once, brainwashed and under the control of…

Fuck.

That was the stray thought she’d been chasing earlier. Dr Alphonse Bimbeau, the man who’d stolen her mother from her, brainwashed her into an obedient slave. She must have been helpless to resist his wishes, but at the time Kara had seen her like that, she’d appeared completely a thinking, independent woman with, if anything, an excess of her own free will.

Bimbeau, the man she believed was Monsieur Hofmann’s silent backer.

That was a reason to try and go against Monsieur Hofmann, as much as she wanted a man to tell her what to do, as much as she was a total teacher’s pet, as much as she was a dumb bitch who didn’t know what to be scared of.

Kara dug down deep, drawing on everything she had, as Theron left the room, mumbling something to himself. Dug down to ball her fingers into a fist and hit Hofmann, anything that might give her an opportunity to escape.

Her traitorous body didn’t move.

“Alright, now,” Hofmann said, getting up from his desk. “We’ll do yours first, Kara. Your parents are close to the time zone, after all.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desktop. “Sit down.”

“Yes, Monsieur.” In spite of her efforts and her rage she was swiftly seated facing the desktop - and more importantly, his webcam.

Below the webcam was a short script, and beside the script another window was open showing the camera’s feed, which at the moment displayed Kara’s blank expression beneath her mortarboard and her bare torso, cutting off just at the cleavage.

Monsieur Hofmann draped a robe across her shoulders and tucked it, businesslike, into place, such that at a glance you might not notice there were no clothes beneath it; even if you picked up on the absence of other fabrics, you might simply assume the dress was cut in a way that was now hidden.

Standing close to her, Hofmann picked up the remote. “This is for your father,” he told her. “You’ll use this script as a basis.”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Change the language to whatever it needs to be convincing, so long as this is the message.”

“Yes, Monsieur.” Kara didn’t see how she could possibly pull it off. Her intonation was flat, her expression was fixed, it would be incredibly obvious that something was wrong. And her father even had prior experience with mind control. He’d put it together.

Then Monsieur Hofmann did something with the remote and the shape of the pressure in her mind changed. She slumped for a moment, blinking rapidly, and felt tears well in her eyes as she ceased staring unblinking. She raised her hand to wipe away the tears and only then realised she was moving, a new freedom granted her by the remote.

Monsieur Hofmann was tapping his foot impatiently, just out of sight, and in spite of it all she realised she still wanted to please him, still wanted to be a total teacher’s pet.

She cleared her throat and attempted a smile, then glanced over the script.

Hello Daddy! Or bonjour, papa, I should really say.

As you can see, I’ve done it! I’ve graduated. But I’m afraid I’m not coming back home directly. I’ve made some wonderful friends here, and I’ve agreed to go travelling with them.

Don’t worry - I’ll call as soon as I’m settled, and I’ll see you again in good time.

The words swam in front of her eyes. The pounding of her anger had not let up, and it found itself now with plenty of fuel. She remembered her father, sitting all but broken in the study at home, the one room that had never borne any marks of her mother; remembered the months it took him to even start to show interest in life again. Remembered, too, how that had compounded her own heartbreak, how much she had struggled to put life back into his eyes.

She leaned violently to one side, driving her elbow into the headmaster’s crotch. As he doubled over, she grabbed the back of his head and drove him face-first into the desk, then vaulted over it, rolling, the black gown billowing out behind her, to reach an ornate chair that rested by the door.

With a swift, decisive action she had the chair under the handle, jamming the door closed; with her free hand she wrenched the control headband and the mortar board from her head.

Growling something incoherent on the theme of the word ‘bitch’, Hofmann was staggering back to his feet, remote clutched desperately in his hand. Kara rushed back - if she was to stand any chance of success, she needed him incapable of giving orders - but he clicked something on the remote and Dai Lu, who had been entirely motionless throughout, abruptly stepped in the way.

Dai Lu was heir to what Kara privately suspected was a mildly-criminal manufacturing corporation in China, someone the current owner wanted to be able to show off before marrying her off strategically. She kept herself fit, enjoyed calisthenics, and upwards of a year skiing had given her thigh muscles containing a frankly devastating power. What she was not was a trained martial artist. Kara’s own training was pushing the upper limits of what might be termed ‘enthusiastic self defence’, but desperation was a powerful adrenaline source.

She danced back a step out of Dai Lu’s kick range; the power of the other woman’s kick had, without an impact to contain it, spun her around. Kara took this breathing space to ball up her gown and, as Dai Lu turned back, she threw it in her face, lunging past her.

Hofmann’s mind controlled ally was blinded, but whatever impulse to defend him he’d triggered, she was still trying, and Kara caught a flailing punch on the side of her head. She stumbled, but Hofmann was too busy jerking open a desk drawer to help; Kara suddenly remembered the injection she’d been given those weeks ago and lunged, sliding across the desk in something of an improvised tackle.

Both of them hit the ground with a slam; there was a pounding on the door to the office and Kara had a moment to worry that they’d break in, that the chair wouldn’t hold - it was decorative enough that it would either be flimsy or ridiculously sturdy. Then she pivoted, rolling onto Hofmann’s back and grabbing a hold across his throat. She clamped down until he’d stopped struggling, then a couple of seconds more in case he was playing possum.

When she was sure he was out cold she shoved him aside, grabbed the remote, and pulled herself back up to be seated in the chair. Dai Lu was still in defence mode, but whatever programming the headband gave her for that, it didn’t include the capacity to pull the robe off her head. Thinking back to how limited she’d been during the entire auction, Kara could see how something like that wasn’t really in the design briefs; the button commands were for very standardised actions. Nothing too complicated. For that you needed to free up mindspace, as Hofmann had just before she broke free.

She peered at the remote for a few moments. There were a set of numbered buttons, then a set of buttons with pictographs, and she thought the big square button in front of the numbered buttons might apply to all the headbands. Dai Lu had been fifth in the row, so she hit 5, and then tried a pictograph of a stick figure standing upright.

Dai Lu’s head stilled, her body stiffening to attention.

She stood as a statue, gazing into the darkness of the robe, a flesh robot with as little free will as the most basic computer program, a strange tingle filling her brain on a level with the headband, all thought processes interrupted as they passed through the static.

Kara breathed out a slow sigh of relief, killed the video window on the desktop, and rifled through Hofmann’s pockets for his cellphone.

The authorities needed to hear about this.