“Tell me how it happened again,” Bimbeau demanded.

Candace would have obeyed in any case but, deep as she was in a hypnotic trance, all she could do was open her mouth and begin to recite exactly what had happened as she perceived it, and everything that had been said word-perfect to the conversation.

Had he not been so worried what had happened to Annie, the Doctor would probably have found the mimicry of Annie’s accent quite cute, especially as Candace’s brogue rarely softened otherwise.

Unfortunately, his concern was very much directed elsewhere at that moment.

Candace couldn’t help but watch him, as her head was fixed in one position, but there was enough of her awareness to feel his distress. Her Master’s distress.

She felt she had caused it. She just didn’t understand how.

“It has to have been some psychic imprint,” he murmured. “But what?”

Candace was glad that he seemed to instantly dismiss the idea that she’d been responsible. She hadn’t dwelled much on guilt before her brainwashing, and she hadn’t really had reason to since; she had known her purpose very well, and had carried it out.

Life was much easier when you had an overriding, programmed purpose. You never needed felt guilty, or at least she’d always thought that.

Now it didn’t seem so sure.

The Doctor sighed. “I really don’t know, Candace…”

There was no good answer to that when you knew your Master was always right. “I’m sorry, Master,” she tried. It seemed closest.

He looked up at her thoughtfully. “Mm,” he said, and looked back to Annie. “You know,” he said, “this would be easier if I had another one of her here, to read her mind and investigate.”

The Doctor was usually happier with more information. Or just an obedient pair of tits to hand. “Yes, Master.”

He looked back up at her and she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes, couldn’t tell what he was thinking, what he thought of her.

“Wake up,” he said, and snapped his fingers. Candace blinked several times, rapidly, as she came around. Her hand raised to her lips, wiping away the tiny strand of drool which had begun to collect.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make this about me.”

He looked at her again, and this time his frown didn’t seem like it was remonstrating with her. “I didn’t think you were?”

There was no answer to that. Rather than stay silent she offered “Could we try to reach her with the portable Tiara?”

“Oh.” His eyes lit up. “Yes, good thinking! Run along and fetch it here.”

“Yes, Doctor.” She hurried into action.

*

She felt maroooned, trapped, confused. Everything was wrong. Everything was unpleasant. It was all most distressing.

She craved explanation, but the explanations were not in her head.

Nor had the questions that now needed explanation, she thought.

Could she find the head that held them?

She reached out, expecting she was doing so blindly, but finding the mind she sought so quickly, she knew that could not be true.

He screwed the monitor casing back into place. Not tight, but enough that it wouldn’t be immediately spotted. It wouldn’t matter later.

Well, he didn’t think it would matter later. He pushed the power button for her computer, turning it on. The thumbdrive was already in place, the alterations to display should load in as soon as that phase of the BIOS boot finished.

He listened to the beeps and smiled, not really feeling the pleasure but thinking that he should now he knew the monitor would work the way he wanted it to.

Pleasure wasn’t something Bimbeau felt much these days. He told himself that this would change when he pulled this off, but he didn’t truly believe it.

He heard her key rattle in the lock; Dr Kraft had expected to be the first in, as she usually was. He scurried over to his own desk, getting to his seat as she realised the office was already unlocked and stepped in.

Now came the waiting. There was so much tension in him; he was committed now. It would hopefully work, and if not there was a slim possibility she might not work it out. But he doubted it.

She was smart, observant, (witty) and it seemed entirely believable to him that she could infer what he’d tried if it worked just enough for her to notice some changes to her attitude, but not enough that he could control it.

He listened to Candace walking to her desk. He didn’t need to look to know exactly where she was these days; not until it got later and she turned the radio on.

There was the clatter of her keyboard; her password, no doubt.

They hadn’t spoken in weeks, but it was all he could do to stop himself from speaking.

It turned out he didn’t need to anyway. “Kindly do not fiddle with my computer,” she said, and he heard only her anger and frustration with him in her tone.

If he was right, it would vanish soon. “Mm?” He wasn’t sure that he sounded normal in saying it. He knew what he’d done; to him it was obvious in his tone that he was up to no good. He just didn’t know if it would be to her. He turned in his chair to get a better sense of what was happening.

“Oh!” he said. “Sorry about that. I’ve been experimenting with some peripherals, and I think they built up some static. Try de-gaussing. That should help.”

He’d rehearsed the line in his head a dozen times, and out loud a handful more. It still didn’t sound perfect, he didn’t think. But he watched her reach out and press the degauss button. He heard its signature thunk.

He wasn’t at the right angle to see the screen - if he would have been, he wasn’t sure he’d have found a way to test the plan - but he saw her body language from over one shoulder, saw her stiffen and straighten for a moment. She shook her head abruptly.

“No,” she told him, her voice distant more than frustrated, “that’s not working right.”

It sounded like it was working. For the first time since he’d committed to the plan he stopped to consider its results. He wondered whether she really looked the way he pictured her, once you took off her clothes.

Years ago - perhaps four years earlier - he and his wife had speculated on the Krafts’ sex life together one night while they prepared dinner. He remembered his wife’s cheerful tone, impossible to be angry with, as she admitted that if it turned out the aristocrats were swingers she’d happily be led into Angus Kraft’s bedroom.

It had seemed easy, on that night, to say the same about Candace. And he had somewhat meant it, but one reason it had seemed easy was because he wanted his wife more than her, was comfortable having this conversation with her. The speculation had been idle, had been born out of fun rather than need.

Things had changed.

“Try it again,” he told her, and again he was sure that his voice must be giving him away; he was clearly too excited. He watched her lift her hand to the button again and fire it; a few moments later, she hit it again and giggled.

“No,” she said, the word taking longer to say than it should. “You’ve done something. I don’t know what?”

It was working. It was the first real confirmation he’d had that it was working. He was hard, suddenly, and he wanted to push her along.

She was every memory of frustration, every mental association with loss. She needed to be conquered. “Could you guess what?” he asked.

He waited a long time for his answer, and the whole time he was on tenterhooks. Her silence told him nothing; only her choice of what to say could. Eventually she mumbled “It’s not supposed to be this hard to think.”

Perfection. He rolled his chair across to her, walking his way across the room, resting his elbow on the desk beside her so he could see her face. “There are things that will make it easier,” he said.

“What?”

“Obedience.”

The furrowed concentration on her brow smoothed out. “That doesn’t make sense,” she mumbled.

It wasn’t what he’d expected her to say, insofar as he’d had any clear expectation. But it was in the right direction, and it would offer him a test. “Oh, but it does,” he said. “Let me show you.”

“I don’t think that’s-“

“Clasp your hands behind your head.”

She did so promptly, without hesitation. There was none of the jerkiness or uncertainty he had expected from her motions; the grace she habitually moved with, or had done before their friendship had soured, was present. Her spine straightened, but her eyes stayed on the screen.

“Are you… brainwashing me?”

“We’re finding that out together, but it looks like it.” He put his hand on the back of her chair and turned it so she was facing him, or so that most of her was facing him - her eyes stayed on the screen. His attention was lower, teasing aside the buttons of her blouse.

“Why? We’ve never actually quarrelled.”

“No,” he said, almost automatically. And then he realised that he didn’t really have an answer.

Hand still holding one of her buttons, he stopped for a while and thought.

“Truthfully… I need your brain,” he admitted. “I actually have a plan, now.” Which was true, even if it sounded like the plan was clear and had a goal in mind. That bit he was less sure of. “A way to change things. I lost the life I wanted, so fine; I’ll take the one everyone joked about. I’ll show them.” He was getting angrier the longer he talked, not with her, not even with the people who had taunted him, but with reality, with the stupid chance that had ruined the life he had settled for.

“You… need my brain?”

She sounded almost accepting. He was in the middle of undoing another button when he heard it and it sent a sudden shiver of excitement down her spine. He clenched harder and heard the sound of buttons hitting surfaces, looked down to see he’d tugged her blouse open, sheared buttons off it.

“Right,” he said. “But while I’m after that, I thought I’d take your body too.” His tone was, briefly, coloured by guilt on that comment; it was hard to say it aloud without recognising just how unfair it could be.

He pulled her blouse open, stared at her body. Hungry for her. Numb. Unsure how he could be both at once.

“You’re using my short term memory?”

Sweet Jesus, she was smart. Too smart, perhaps, but he didn’t want to think like that. He needed to distract himself, needed to feel something positive about all this. He hooked his fingers into her bra cups and tugged them both down, baring her breasts. Her nipples were right there, her breasts soft. They seemed inviting.

He began to play with them, and her nipples hardened almost immediately. “That’s how my method works,” he told her absently. “I need your brain because I’ll need your research if I’m going to KEEP you like this, permanently. Let alone anyone else.”

“I don’t… understand…”

“I’ve tried doing life the right way. Turns out you can lose everything that matters in an instant.” He was monologuing now, conscious of it, embarrassed by it. But he also understood how it had become a thing now. So many pent-up emotions and frustrations that had curdled in him for so long.

Things he couldn’t have said to anyone before this moment. Only her helplessness, and the fact he had created her helplessness, made it feel possible even to tell her.

He knew that wasn’t a particularly healthy way to behave, but it was the way his parents had taught him by example, and it was the way he knew. “So now? Now it’s time to cheat. Supervillains don’t have this kind of trouble.”

It was out now, out in the open. And with that it seemed so much less like wish fulfilment, so much more like a mad idea. But how could he stop partway, now, and not feel damned?

“I have a family,” Candace answered. He sighed, irritated in spite of himself. He let go with one hand, stabbing at the degauss button, and felt her shiver under his other hand. Her lips parted wider to give out a needy moan.

“Don’t worry about that,” he told her.

“Yes, Doctor.”

He tightened his grip involuntarily. The way she’d said that… he felt himself reacting to her differently all of a sudden. Still the same desire but it had a surprising new urgency to it. “Oh, fuck,” he muttered. “This was the right decision.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she said again, and if the first time had sounded only like acquiescence, this time she sounded happy about it.

Was that possible? Could she be happy like this?

“Put your hands on the table edge, either side of the keyboard,” he ordered. He stood up, kicking his chair backward out of the way, his eyes glued to her body as she obeyed just as firmly as her eyes were glued to the screen. “Stand up and bend over, hands where they are,” he continued.

She did so, one foot nudging her own chair to roll back out of the way, taking two steps back so she could properly bend over without moving her hands. “Yes, Doctor.”

She was spreading her legs wide. Her back arched; if he’d removed her blouse entirely he was sure he’d be able to see her tits hanging down. He wanted that, suddenly.

He wanted her. Not just as a proof of concept or an exercise of power, and she was no supermodel but she was a woman he knew, a woman whose intelligence he respected, and he wanted her. Carnal desire had come back properly, the numbness exiled.

That had to be good.

The zipper on her skirt was giving him trouble. They always had, but his wife had often found ways to make it easier for him when they had found themselves caught by the urge early on an evening. He hadn’t realised how much until now.

When he finally got her right he tugged her skirt down by her knees, his eyes going to her backside. As with her breasts, his guesses and imagination for her figure hadn’t been quite right, but equally as with her breasts, he found himself delighted by what was there. He ran his hands over each buttock, stroking, then squeezing, and then hooked his fingers into her panties at the hip, working those down in turn.

God, she was already soaking wet. Was that something he’d programmed in without realising it? Was it something he could use? He knew it was something he liked, at least.

He took a moment to step back, looking at her body, and it struck him how obediently she was holding her pose. He chuckled. “I wonder how long I could leave you like this,” he said. He was teasing her, he suddenly realised. Flirting with her.

Did you need to flirt with your mind control victim?

“I… would wait, Doctor,” she answered. “But… I hope I would be a temptation.” He laughed, surprised and delighted.

Did your mind control victim need to flirt with you? “This is going better than I dared hope,” he muttered, unbuckling his belt and pulling out his cock before putting his hands on her hips again.

*

“Can you hear me?” His voice entered her consciousness, but it sounded almost like a different person.

“I hear you,” she heard herself answering, but her voice seemed some distance away. Like someone else was speaking for her. Pinpricks along her forehead seemed closer to it somehow.

“Are you alright, Annie?” The concern in his tone seemed like something that just wasn’t there in the memory she’d investigated.

“Yes,” she said slowly, and was slightly surprised to hear that opinion from herself. Everything seemed a little off.

“But you fainted, and you wouldn’t wake,” he said. “So you see why we’re concerned.”

“No,” she heard herself answer.

There was a long pause. “What do you mean?” he asked eventually, and she could hear not just concern but something like anxiety from him now.

“I understand why Candace is confused,” she answered, and she was intrigued by the sing-song cadence her voice was drifting into, “but what I’ve seen in your mind is so much more cutthroat.”

She wasn’t monitoring for it but she could feel consternation, almost identically, spilling from two minds near her. A third registered puzzlement.

“Cutthroat?” asked the man who had expressed his desire to be a supervillain. “I… What did you see?”

“I saw Erica become Rikki,” she answered dreamily, “and I saw Candace go through the device, and how it changed her.

“And I saw how you first enthralled Candace. You tricked me,” she continued, following the path of the dream logic, “but you trapped her.”

Silence fell again. “So… you found out, and you… took yourself away from it?”

“I suppose so,” she said.

“What would happen,” Candace said suddenly, “if he ordered you to wake up?”

“I would have to obey,” she answered, and in her answer she learned something about the hold he had on her. The hypnotic techniques he hadn’t learned when he first worked on Candace.

"The Tiara will work as it should, Doctor,” she heard Candace say, her tone urgent. “Order her to forget her worries and wake.”

Her heart ached. She understood, on more than a simple level, that Candace was the Doctor’s loyal slave - she’d been inside her mind, after all, and perhaps some of that programming had seeped in alongside the hypnotic suggestion, as pushing back against him certainly seemed more daunting than it should be - but the compassion she’d felt from the woman had surprised her, and she had hoped there was something there.

“I’m not sure,” Bimbeau said. “I don’t think that’s the right approach.”

“You’re not going to bargain with her?” Candace sounded horrified, and Annie felt strongly that if she were able to disagree with the Doctor that she would have sounded a lot more adamant.

“Is that what this would be?” he asked. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure of much about this, Candace.”

Annie could hear her hesitation. “Nor am I, Doctor.”

“So why cheerlead for a solution you’re not sure of?”

Candace’s hesitation was clear in her mind. Annie planted her thoughts against those of the other woman and she gently pushed toward the truth, not yet knowing what that would be.

“I don’t like what she’s done to you, Doctor.”

“What she’s done to me?”

“Yes, Master. Haven’t you noticed?”

There was a moment of silence, and it was echoed in Annie’s own thoughts. Had she done anything that could have affected him? She didn’t remember it.

On the other hand, she’d only just found out that her odd fancies of being able to push the thoughts of others were based in truth.

She reached back out to touch his mind, looking to verify Candace’s assertion.

There was no defence against her in his mind, but that could have been either that she had brushed aside his protection or simply that he hadn’t felt he needed one.

Their connection, in the interview…

She experienced it now from his perspective. There…

Hmm.

Something had changed in his head, part way through. She hadn’t checked up on her pushes before, but she was sure all the same that what had changed had come from her mind.

Immediately she felt a guilt settle on her that her more rational side claimed hotly was pure nonsense. She had only pushed because of the way she was made to feel.

…but…

“What have you done to me?” Bimbeau asked her.

“I echoed you,” she answered, her tone empty. “I amplified you and reflected you. And so you would feel to me the way I was coming to feel to you.”

“You see, Doctor?” Candace burst out angrily. “She… she got to you.”

Annie wanted to point out that it wasn’t intentional, but the machine wouldn’t let her speak without prompting.

And then it came to her.

I didn’t mean to, she thought, and the idea was present in both of their heads. She hoped it would seem not like their thoughts but like a message from her.

She felt sudden tension from them both.

“Please, Master,” Candace said again, “she’s a threat. Order her to forget her concerns and make her yours. She shouldn’t be allowed to affect you.”

“Should you?”

“…Doctor?” Annie’s heart ached for Candace with how confused and fearful she felt. She couldn’t console her, and feared the results of pushing calm upon her.

“Should you be allowed to affect me?”

There was silence outside her mind.

“Your appeals, your words, your suggestions… I listen to them all.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Candace answered, and Annie felt just how helpless she was to do anything else; and yet at the same time part of her was surprised.

She doesn’t know how true that is, she pushed out. There was another long silence.

“I think,” the Doctor said eventually, “that you should speak your mind aloud, Annie.”

“Thank you, Alphonse,” she said warmly, relieved.

There was emotion in her voice again. That was interesting; she wasn’t at all sure he’d expected that.

“And thank you, too,” he told Candace. “Annie… I was concerned because you passed out. Now I’m concerned because the two of you are at odds.”

“We don’t have to be,” Candace blurted. “Change her, or change me if she’s changed you enough to choose her instead.” Annie could feel the other woman get excite as she continued, “Better yet, change us both! Make us as close as anything.”

Clearly she got off on the idea of being changed. Annie was willing to bet she hadn’t always, but some of that arousal was leaking back into her.

“It’s definitely one solution,” he allowed. Annie was immediately sure it was a choice he’d have to be driven to; not his preference at all. What was his preference?

She probed his mind, looking for it, and found only a rough shape of an idea, without definition enough to put words to. He knew what he wanted, but not how to get there.

She could try and put it into words herself. Volunteer it. And she would, then, make him happy, which she already wanted to do even if it was the programming.

But that would just hurt Candace all the more, and she didn’t want to do that at all. She focused.

Hello, Candace. Don’t react. Don’t let him see yet.

She felt the confusion, the shock, the fear. And, underlying it, she had a shock of her own as she felt the other woman’s jealousy.

Candace prized her position as the Doctor’s primary slave.

It made so much sense, now that it was fully clear. It was embarrassing that she’d missed it before.

He’s looking for a solution. I want you to have it first. And she took the shape and pushed it across to Candace, remembering that Alphonse had marvelled at how quickly she put together his plans from relatively minimal information.

“Doctor,” Candace said hesitantly. Annie was too busy suppressing the other woman’s fear that this might be a trick to concentrate on why. “I think I have a compromise.”

Which was a tricky word, Annie sensed; Bimbeau was her Master, so he hardly needed to compromise. It therefore seemed to her that it meant something for his response to be to pause, then to say “Go on,” rather than to dismiss Candace out of hand.

“Your main goal was always the genetic code for psionics,” she said. “But the physical package surrounding it - I can see why she appeals. And as a person she certainly has your attention.” There was hurt in her head as she said that, there was jealousy, but Annie hoped Alphonse wouldn’t be made angry by it; at the least it should make her point.

“So if Annie were to be compelled not to broadcast for a few months, we could run a test.” And I know how horny you get for tests, Annie heard her think, and filed that away for her own future use.

“What kind of test?”

“For six months, lock off her ability to project, either as messages or impulses. But if she can still receive, then she’ll have had dozens of moments where she wanted to project. You can put her under the Tiara and make her recall them and decide based on that.”

She took a deep breath. “In the meantime… we’ll have to learn where she fits in. I don’t think she’s going to take a space like Lulu or Rikki. So I guess I need to learn how to handle that.”

“Or be programmed to,” Annie said gently, hoping that Candace’s fetish for being reprogrammed would make her see it as a helpful thing.

“Or that.”

The Doctor exhaled slowly. “Annie?”

“I should want nothing of the sort, I know, but… anything that will help the three of us make this work, Alphonse. Do you want to program that in for me now?”

“Well… we’ll try it,” he said. “Good thinking, Candace.”

“Thank you, Master.”

Annie felt the glow of pride. We’ll talk later, she sent. Nothing bad. I can’t escape this, so I want to do it properly. I hope you’ll help me, sister.

That had a ring to it.

This was probably a mistake, but she’d starred in worse mistakes before.