If she was perfectly honest, Saffron quite liked how unusual her name was nowadays. It stood out in roll calls, it gave her a comfortable space far enough down any alphabetical roll-call list that she could figure out what was happening before it was her go, and people kind of expected that if someone had her name, they’d be flighty and unreliable, so it served as an excuse of its own.

She’d said as much to one of the guys running the study, and he’d promptly told her that this was a test of memory, and there were no expectations or tests on her behaviour. Which was a little embarrassing, but then - this was why she was in favour of alphabetical roll-call. Everyone had just been milling around before they were shown through to the experiment room. How was anyone meant to know how this shit worked if they didn’t have a chance to see someone else deal with it first?

She took her seat with the others and paused to admire the headphones. These things were crazy good; they were way too expensive for it to make any sense that they were being used here. Her dad was a serious audiophile, the kind who never dropped under a hundred dollars on headphones. She’d actually heard him geeking out over these things the last time she’d been back home.

When the visuals came up on the monitor, though, she was suddenly a lot less interested. Her dad’s audio thing was kinda cool - way better than Beatrice had to deal with, she’d heard once, having a dad who was car mad - and she was even grudgingly impressed by the fact he used it to listen to an extensive collection of vinyls.

On the other hand, the hippy-dippy shit he listened to had a lot to do with why he had to wear headphones. Neither she nor her mom cared about that stuff, and Saffron’s initial reaction to the swirling, bubbling pastels was to think of the psychedelica her dad loved, just with the contrast and saturation turned way down.

She was instinctively disinterested in the art, and not much more interested in even the minor amount of direction she had to take for the test itself. Her memory was fine; if it wasn’t she’d hardly have the grades she did, because they certainly weren’t from hard study.

She was barely even looking at the screen. When this was over, she still had to eat. Could she afford to eat out? Her eyes flicked back down for a moment to the pink swirl on the screen. Definitely couldn’t afford anywhere but fast food, she thought a good thirty seconds or so later when she glanced away again. Was she in the mood for fried chicken? Her eye fell back on the screen, and she caught sight of the lightest pink spot on the screen. She followed that around the screen for a while, not thinking about it. There were moments where it seemed to be tracing shapes out in its path, but she wasn’t at all sure what they were, wasn’t prepared to put the effort in to find out either.

*

Tilly was already regretting that she hadn’t been allowed to bring in a notepad. Sure, this was all about testing memory, but Tilly felt like hers was already full to bursting. She’d almost dropped out several times between sign-up and the test itself. She was pre-law, she’d only even signed up as a favour to Rosalyn, she had better things to be doing with her time.

On the other hand, it was an afternoon where a couple of hours at least could be taken off from thinking about that side of her life, and those were rare enough.

When the graphics started and the sounds began to play, Tilly settled down to concentrate. Dividing her attention in an effort to take in everything was challenging, to say the least, but she was used to scoring high on tests and there were only going to be two goes at this memory test. She definitely wanted to nail it.

To begin with, she didn’t really stay on any one pattern as it flowed through the screen, eyes darting from one detail to another. But as it became clear she wasn’t really keeping up with everything, Tilly decided to try to just follow one pattern until it started to repeat. Then she could try to learn another.

The music she was pretty sure she already had memorised. That steady rhythm had been sounding in her ears since the very beginning, and it was easy to keep up with. Any questions on it, she was sure, would be no problem; it was so catchy it almost felt like it was somehow part of her. She’d be hearing it and probably humming it at intervals through the rest of the day.

The pattern she was following started to repeat itself, and Tilly knew that the plan was that she should move on to another, memorise another, move forward gathering more information. That had been her plan and it was the most sensible way to memorise as much as possible.

Only it turned out that just knowing she should move on to something else didn’t make that easy. Didn’t even make it possible. Despite reminding herself every thirty seconds or so that she should move on, Tilly’s eyes had locked onto the first of the patterns. She traced it over and over as if someone had given her a task to do so. And her hands, jerking and dancing and teasing across her body, across her soft, yielding breasts, they followed the pattern too, if Tilly had only noticed. Her body moved to the pattern like the puppet she had become, and as her lips parted and quiet moans began to escape, even the tip of her tongue traced the pattern in midair.

Tilly was only a follower now, and very quickly she wasn’t even criticising herself for it. Wasn’t even thinking about it. Wasn’t thinking.

Wasn’t aware at all.

*

There was no doubt about it, Saffron mused. Only a few people were actually acting weird, but there were so many knock-on effects from that to make campus feel like a completely different place over the past month. Almost everyone who was acting differently was a woman, too. Was it something in the water?

It might be something about the two geeks from the experiment, of course. Seemed like she was seeing them out and about a lot more than she used to, and they always seemed to have one of the girls who was acting weird by their sides. The taller one wasn’t exactly uncharismatic, but he also didn’t exactly stand out from the pack; the shorter one made her skin crawl at times. She’d taken to keeping an eye out for anyone who’d been in the experiment with her and just trying to avoid them. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but what was? She was going to feel chased out of some campus haunts or she was going to be close to the drama. And close to the drama wasn’t how Saffron liked to operate.

She never liked to admit it but one thing her dad and her OG hippy-as-hell grandma had managed to pass on to her was a preference for tranquility and peace, something it was hard enough to get on or around campus even before all this happened. Saffron felt like admitting it was a risk; that she’d come off as weak, leading to more trouble. The only lesson from her upbringing she was ever willing to talk about was the distrust for authority that had been firmly instilled in her; she knew that made the people most likely to be trouble for her a little less willing to start trouble.

That was the way Saffron liked to solve problems; the pass of least resistance. Getting out of the way or finding some block that made it safe for her to be around.

She was starting to dread the upcoming follow-up. Being in a room with a dozen women who were acting weird and the spare dozen who’d stayed halfway normal… that wasn’t all that attractive. There were far too many ways it could go wrong.

Saffron turned, as she occasionally did, to meditation. She’d long ago sabotaged the fire alarm in her room. Now she set the draft excluder up under the door, cracked open her window a little, poured some of her favourite incense into a burner, and lit the candle below.

Sitting cross-legged on her bed directly in front of the desk where her burner rested, Saffron set her arms down, resting her wrists on her knees, drew in a deep breath, and started to follow the patterns of the smoke.

The more she followed them, the more she took them in, the less she saw of them; she went from studying to watching to simply looking. The rhythm of her breathing changed and slowed.

Saffron began to let go of her senses, instead folding inward, curling her thoughts in on herself. She let her negative emotions roll off her, releasing her stress and her anxieties. The world seemed to slowly still, until all was empty and quiet.

…except…

There was something she could hear, all the same. So quiet it was almost unnoticed, quiet enough that it took all her focus to make it out clearly. And, as she gave it that focus, there came a thin flicker of light behind her closed eyelids, too.

The more she focused on the one, the clearer the other became. Against the darkness of her empty trance, the word flickered and echoed, getting more and less clear, until finally enough clarity had been achieved that she could make it out.

…worshipful…

Disconnected from everything else, the word simply hung there, taking up her attention - and her attention had latched onto it in a way she wasn’t quite comfortable with. The word had a resonance for her; in some strange way it just felt… right, somehow… even though she was firmly against that kind of religious devotion. Only gullible fools believed in anything. Only some fraction of those gullible fools would worship what they believed in.

Saffron opened her eyes, blinking slowly. Even as she welcomed the world back into her senses, that word stayed with her. She had an image of it tattooed on her brain, a new concept marking her forever. And in spite of her own denial, now that she was thinking about it, she had to admit that some element of the idea was appealing to her now. The idea of giving over control to something greater. Putting her faith in a power well beyond her own. Kneeling before an altar or a priest. Making an offering of herself…

Saffron shivered, biting her lower lip. The way her mind was taking those images and fantasies was far more erotic than she’d expected. It carried a charge for her, a sensual thrill; she was suddenly aware she was now wet between her thighs, with no idea when that might have happened nor when her lips had abruptly dried.

She wasn’t sure what all this said about her, but she didn’t think she liked it. Or didn’t think she should like it, one of the two.

…worshipful…

The word still echoed around her mind, and Saffron sat uncertainly and wondered where it had come from and how it had surfaced.

*

For very different reasons, Tilly was uncomfortable with the upcoming second phase of the test herself. In her case, it was just a matter of scheduling; the follow-up happened to be booked for a day before one of the most important exams of Tilly’s year. It was going to interrupt her studies, it was going to be something else to think about, it was another source of worry and distraction. It wasn’t, she told herself, unreasonable for her to be focused on other things. It wasn’t rudeness.

But all the same, she wasn’t sure she could reasonably get out of it.

Tilly and Saffron would not have got on, if they’d ever been introduced for more than fleeting seconds. Their attitudes to life were too different, and possibly the place where this stood out the most was in their respective attitudes to conflict. Saffron would find ways to avoid it, and as avoiding the follow-up test would draw attention and have answers demanded of her, she wouldn’t dream of it. Tilly was more than willing to fight her corner, so long as she had a chance of victory.

The logical next step was to speak to her friend Rosalyn.

When it happened, the meeting took place in their favourite coffee shop, late one afternoon. It wasn’t on campus, technically, but all of campus life passed through it; Rosalyn had chosen a table in the back, in the one corner that wasn’t really very visible from the rest of the room. There was always a faint aroma of chemical cleaners at that table, with how close it was to a store cupboard, and it wasn’t brilliantly lit. Nobody ever sat there unless every other seat was taken.

But the place was quiet and Rosalyn was sitting in the back. Tilly took a seat across from her, sipped her coffee, and waited.

Silence was always an effective prompt for Rosalyn. “I know,” she almost hissed. “I’m not happy about it either.”

Tilly waited.

“I just don’t want to risk us being seen, is all.”

Tilly glanced over her shoulder. She wasn’t sure she recognised anyone else in the shop - no, wait, Jenni Scott was at the counter, collecting three cups, and her girlfriend Harmony had even been at the experiment. But Jenni didn’t see her, and there was nobody else…

She looked back to Rosalyn, who was raising her hands in acknowledgement already. “Right,” he agreed. “But how could I know that ahead of time?”

“Let’s try something else,” Tilly said, as gently as she could. “What are you scared of?”

“They’ve not missed me yet,” Rosalyn told her, which was useless as an answer. “Sooner or later they will. But it’ll happen a lot faster if they’re reminded about me.”

“Who?”

“Do you know your word?”

Tilly was quiet again, but not, this time, to coax Rosalyn into saying more. Just quiet because she had no idea what to say or even how to go about saying it. Not under the circumstances. Eventually she said “Let’s try to keep it to one thing at a time. Who’s they?”

“The Terrible Twins.” Off Tilly’s continuing puzzled expression, Rosalyn clarified. “Nick and Joey. The two assholes.”

“The guys behind the experiment?”

“Right. I thought - with you asking to talk about it, I figured you knew. You have to know. Right?”

“Roz, I’m totally lost right now,” Tilly admitted. “I just… I don’t really have time for the follow-up.”

“Maybe not,” Rosalyn answered, “but there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to go anyway.”

“Are you advising me to go?”

“Christ, no.”

“Just… just help me out here, Roz, OK?”

“I’m trying. I just… it would be easier if you knew your word.”

“OK. Let’s actually focus on that.” Tilly dipped her hand into her jacket and came out with a notepad and pen. Clearly she was going to need to take notes on this conversation, if only so she could review them later and sort it all into coherent order. “What’s a word, in this context?”

“It’s…” Rosalyn sighed. “It’s like a trigger. A posthypnotic trigger. You know what one of those-”

“Everyone knows what one of those is,” Tilly retorted, a little drily. “Screenwriters love them. Horror films, crime dramas. They’re a perfect McGuffin for that sort of thing.” And somewhere in the middle of saying all that, her brain caught up to the implication. “You’re saying that Nick and Joey somehow planted triggers in…”

“In everyone at the test,” Rosalyn answered, her voice flat, emotionless, and certain. “Unless someone managed to shrug theirs off. Yeah. I don’t know how - subliminal suggestion isn’t really a thing the way those movies say it is. But I spotted something, worked out that’s what they were doing. And I’ve…” She flushed beet red and wouldn’t meet Tilly’s eye. “I found out what my word is.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not telling you.”

After just a moment’s thought, Tilly had to admit this was a pretty reasonable attitude if it was true. “Okay,” she said. “How do I work out what mine is?”

“Have you noticed any changes in your behaviour lately?”

Tilly sat back in her chair, looking at Rosalyn for a moment. “What kind of thing?”

“If I already knew what kind of thing, I wouldn’t need to ask.” Rosalyn bit her lip. “I’m trying to - your word will be influencing you even when you’re not triggered.”

“And you know because yours is.”

Rosalyn sighed. “Yeah.”

Tilly hadn’t been curious at all, but now she really wanted to know. Still, this all sounded incredibly unlikely… “So when you say I’m going to go to the test anyway…”

“I don’t think we’re going to have much choice,” Rosalyn said quietly. “And that’s a real problem.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound good. But… how sure are you this is all really happening?”

It was Rosalyn’s turn, it seemed, to answer silently. Tilly met her eyes to begin with, but flinched shortly, looked away shortly; there was fear in those eyes, and pain, and she had no answer to that. Her own discomfort at the expression was her answer. Whether it was really happening or all in Roz’ head, Roz was a true believer. And she wasn’t happy about it.

“How bad is this?” she asked quietly.

Rosalyn sucked in her breath as she pondered an answer. “So… after you’re activated,” she said, “it wears off a bit. Back down to a background level. And when I’m at that background level, I don’t really like how it is. I don’t like what I’m willing to do. But I’m not sure…” She sighed. “I’m not sure that isn’t just because I’m aware of it. See, one of the things I don’t like is, I know it’s not how I’m supposed to be. Not how I really am. But my brain acts like it’s normal now, you know?”

Tilly was still processing that when Rosalyn continued.

“But I like who I am with this a lot more than I think I would if Joey was pulling my strings at the time.”

Tilly winced. “Yeah, point very taken.” She took another sip of her coffee. “So… what do we do?”

*

Saffron wasn’t at all sure what to make of the word which had entered her mind. It seemed to have come in with all the trappings of something important. It just didn’t fit, at all, with how she saw herself. It wasn’t something that matched her life story to date. It didn’t suit who she wanted to be.

Which made it all the more awkward that, whenever she thought about it, there was something… tempting… about that.

Something kind of exciting.

She would lie awake at night, an hour after turning the light out, staring into the darkness where her ceiling hit, and the word would echo through her head, a forbidden thing that tempted her, that called to her.

She pictured herself kneeling in worship. Pictured herself meaning it.

One hand crept out from behind her head and slipped under the covers. Her fingers traced lightly, slowly, down her bare chest, pausing at her nipple for quite some time. Saffron was imagining herself kneeling, bent forward over her thighs, forehead resting against the floor, hands out level with her head. Her ass, up in the air, was quivering, and as Saffron’s fingers slid lower across her belly, she could feel herself quivering in time with her mental image.

She realised suddenly that in her mental image, it wasn’t an altar she abased herself in front of. It was the black booted feet of a man.

Abruptly her imagination stripped away her clothes, replacing them with a vague harness construction of red straps that probably couldn’t exist, but which she loved the idea of. Straps criss-crossed her body, giving her extra definition where she wanted it but leaving everything fully accessible. Just as accessible as the eager, wet hole her questing fingers slipped inside.

Saffron bit her lip as she played with herself, but as well as the thrill, as well as the sensations her fingers were coaxing from her body, there was also relief.

She understood now how she could be so focused on a word that was the antithesis of everything she wanted. She’d heard of businessmen, hard-driving corporate types, who went home and settled on their knees before their wives, begging to be caned, freely giving up their power, freely surrendering.

Fetishes, as she understood it, often served as this kind of betrayal of the self. So the only puzzle was why it had taken her so long to realise it.

She stuffed the wrist belonging to the other hand into her mouth to mute her cries from fear that her roommate might realise, never even guessing that her actions made the bunk bed rock. Let alone that her roommate had felt the motion and actually relaxed slightly, thinking the woman she was sharing this part of her life with might not be so weird after all.

She would have been less confident of that if she’d known what Saffron’s fantasy had become.

*

“I’ve got it,” Tilly said abruptly into the despondent silence she and Rosalyn had sunk into. Rosalyn lifted her head with surprise, looking intently back at her.

“Got what?”

“How to avoid this second test thing,” Tilly said, “even if it’s supposed to be something we just need to do.”

Rosalyn shook her head miserably. “None of this stuff is supposed to work,” she said. “But it’s worked so well that I’ve accidentally triggered myself. I’m sure we’re getting pulled back.”

“Sure, if we can be.”

“…what exactly do you mean?”

Tilly’s eyes were bright. “What if we’re just not here?”

“What?”

“Book a vacation. Let’s fly somewhere where we won’t be able to get back in time.”

“I - but -” Rosalyn blinked, and Tilly felt a moment of genuine relief as she watched her friend have to stop and think it through. It wasn’t automatically dismissed; it was an idea that had possibilities. “Where?”

“I think it has to be somewhere expensive,” Tilly said. “Like, if this drive is so crazy powerful, we’d buy tickets back on the day when it took us over, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But if we literally can’t afford to not use our pre-booked return flight…” Ten years later in life it wouldn’t have occurred to Tilly to say that. The idea of wiping out her savings would be a greater fear than even ending up somehow under Joey’s manipulative control. But she was a student still, and there were no built-up savings.

“Maybe… Maybe, like, New Zealand?”

Tilly smiled, trying to inspire her friend to smile too. “Let’s go see the hobbit houses.”