Title: The Case for Editorial Control
Author: BedHead
Summary: The Rozhan Psychiatric Institute has an excellent reputation, but it has been hard to discover whom it treats, and how. Journalist Irina is determined to find out more!
Chapter 10 — Closing the Control Loop
“Minister. A pleasure to meet again.”
“My dear Director, the pleasure is mine. Sit, please.” Sholpan waved at the comfortable visitor’s chair on the other side of her desk. “Both I and the Prime Minister are grateful beyond words for your assistance in reshaping the Ministry’s practices. I don’t mind itting that the transition was not the easiest,” she chuckled, “but we are running very smoothly now.“
“I’m so pleased,” purred the Director, taking the offered seat. “How progresses Nina’s work training your staff?”
“I’m not sure I can thank you enough for loaning her to us.” Sholpan leaned back in her chair. “Indeed, please tell me, Director, how could my Institute thank you adequately for all that you have done for us—indeed, for the nation?”
The Director blushed. “My dear Minister, I am a patriot above all. If what little I can do has helped the country to become better, more true to our ideals, that is sufficient reward, surely?”
“How well put!” Sholpan placed her elbow on her desk and cupped her chin, smiling at the Director. “And surely, we should make sure that the full measure of your contribution is identified and recognized, hmm?”
“Well...” The Director hesitated, too late feeling the ground open up underneath her. “Honestly, a job well done is its own reward.”
“Honesty! I like that.” Sholpan’s eyes flicked up as the door behind the Director opened. “You know, I do find this era of open government and free, honest speech so refreshing after the long, dark nights of the previous regime.“
“Quite so,” temporized the Director, sensing someone’s presence behind her, but uncharacteristically uncertain about whether to acknowledge them. “Was there something specific that you thought I might be able to help you with?”
“As a matter of fact, there is. You know Darsi, of course.” Sholpan gestured to the Director’s right.
With a lump in her throat, the Director turned to see Darsi slumped, apparently unconscious, in a wheelchair. A gown preserved most of her modesty, but she bore a tell-tale dressing on her elbow. An imive Ministry staffer stood behind her.
“I’m afraid that she was quite worn out by the end,” Sholpan said sympathetically. “We’re going to take her to rest for a while before we return her to the Institute. Still, she has been extremely helpful coloring in details about the events before—and after—the Revolution, as seen from the Institute.“
The Director had a sudden urge to pee, but strenuously worked to conceal it. “Well, we are obviously happy to assist the Ministry, as you have seen. Is there anything else which I can help clarify?”
“Quite a lot, I expect,” said Sholpan, suddenly dry. “Though, of course, we have to have the same assurance of absolute honesty as we did with Darsi.“
She nodded to the Director’s left side. “If you’d be so kind as to go with this lady, she will help you prepare.”
The Director looked up at the Ministry aide, standing patiently behind the insensible Darsi. While she didn’t look anything like Besla—her face, though plain, seemed reasonably kind—she was obviously going to follow her boss’s directions.
“I really don’t see why that would be necessary,” the Director tried, attempting to keep the whine out of her voice. “I do have a busy schedule this afternoon.”
“I’m sure,” Sholpan sympathized. “You do work very hard, of course, so this is the perfect excuse for you to take a break. And, after all, it’s at the direct request of the Ministry, so I’m sure that people will understand.“
The Director looked directly into Sholpan’s eyes. In her youth, she had exploited her growing expertise in human psychology and micro-reactions to clean up at poker games. Today, however, she saw someone holding a royal flush—and she only had Dead Man’s Hand.
“Come with me, please, Ms Ospanova.” The Ministry aide held out her hand. “I will take good care of you.”
The attendant’s solicitous help merely made the whole thing worse. That was likely the point, the Director acknowledged, briefly stumbling in her disposable slippers on the way down the stairs to the basement. Stripped of all her possessions, now secure in a locker, the inadequately sized gown she wore reminded her at every step how literally and figuratively naked she was.
She had walked into a room like this many times, but now the table at the center was empty, and it was clear who was expected to occupy it.
“Just there please, Ms Ospanova... Thank you so much.” The Questioner’s polite guidance, and the careful handling of the Director’s body as she was firmly secured to the table was merely rubbing salt into the wound.
The Director tried to gather her thoughts as a nurse prepared the back of her hand for the i/v. Knowing how the amytal worked, she had a chance of preparing false memories—if she had enough time to associate them tightly into her mind. Unfortunately, the risk was that in bringing the real memories forward in order to modify them, her drugged consciousness could end up regurgitating the originals as well as—or, instead of—the fakes.
She winced as the needle went into her vein, and stole a quick look at the bags hanging from the stand. The valves looked to be closed for now, but that was unlikely to last very long.
She tried to slow her breathing as the electrodes were placed under her gown, covertly flexing and releasing her muscles in an attempt to relax.
“It’s quite normal to be tense,” the Questioner remarked, apparently noticing. “We haven’t given you the amnesiac/sedative combination that most of our guests receive before coming down here.” Gentle fingers hooked the nasal catheter into place. “The Minister was sure that we can count on your discretion post-questioning.“
“Of course,” said the Director, struggling to control her voice. “You know, this really isn’t necessary. My loyalty to the regime is obvious, surely?”
“Obvious? Perhaps,” the Questioner agreed. “But, in my considerable experience, it is the small, often forgotten details that come out during this kind of conversation which can give a remarkable amount of color to one’s actions.“
She smiled. “Besides, my dear Ms Ospanova, you’re going to find it quite the experience. We have spared no effort to give you the best possible treatment. Haven’t we, Nina?“
“I’m so happy to be here,” Nina smiled, leaning forward so she was visible to the Director. “I couldn’t stand it—it wouldn’t be right—for someone else to take care of you here.” She moved down to her position, and the Director shuddered involuntarily as bare, slick fingers lightly traced a pattern on the lips of her sex. “Don’t you think?“
“Nina, I...” The Director’s vision started to go blurry. “I... Ohhhh...”
“You see?” said the Questioner, gently. She draped some gauzy fabric over the Director’s eyes. “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.“
The Director started to feel warmness spread through her body. A pink light was coming through the translucent material covering her eyes.
“This is nice,” she mumbled, twitching as Nina patiently played around the edges of her now hyper-sensitive sex.
“Isn’t it? You worked so hard,” soothed the Questioner. “You were so helpful to us, weren’t you? Don’t be shy, tell me what you did.” She paused. “Usha says that you took such good care of her...“
The Director giggled. Deep down, she realized that the drugs were taking over, but it was if her mouth were running out of her control. “Very good care! We made her so happy—I knew she would enjoy it. Just needed a little, little nudge...”
“What did she enjoy?” The Questioner was now almost whispering into the Director’s ear. “Was it like... this?”
A gentle vibration now started to stroke over the tip of the Director’s rosebud, making her gasp and strain. “Oh! It’s too... too...”
“Too much?” murmured the Questioner. “Oh my dear, we haven’t even started yet.”
“Seventy, ninety nine, twenty one " said someone.
“Start the psychoactive please,” said the Questioner, quietly. “Let’s see how well she dissembles when she can’t tell what is real any more.”
A warm finger stroked the Director’s rosebud, circling closer and closer until it suddenly slipped in...
Sholpan quietly entered the room and stood by the door, watching as her team worked on the delirious Director. She patiently waited until the Questioner noticed her entrance, giving her boss an acknowledging nod. A few minutes later, she stood up, whispered some instructions to Nina, then walked over, pulling down her mask.
“How are we doing?” Sholpan asked quietly. “Any resistance?”
“We get short bouts of it now and again,” the Questioner agreed. “She has clearly tried to prepare herself to deflect questioning in certain areas, but she is unable to cover up the deflection. We simply circle around and come in a different way.”
“I assume that she confirms Darsi’s s?”
“Indeed. There are additional details that Darsi did not appear to know, but we can likely easily confirm them through other sources.” She looked back at the helpless woman. “I would expect to be finished in about fifteen minutes, unless anything unexpected comes up. What do you want to do with her?”
Sholpan stroked her chin, thinking. “Just take her to Recovery. Once she’s coherent again, bring her to me please.”
“Certainly.” The Questioner replaced her mask. “Now, if you will excuse me?”
“By all means.” Sholpan left as quietly as she had arrived.
“Ms Ospanova? How are you feeling?”
“Hmmm?” The Director took a moment to realize that the voice was real, not from a dream. She blinked her eyes open to see a pleasant face smiling at her.
“We are all done. Apparently, you were very helpful. Are you still feeling sleepy? You can rest for a while, if you like.”
The fog in the Director’s mind was clearing. She looked around—she was lying on a bed in a small, anonymous room with her Ministry attendant sitting next to her. Her right hand was somewhat sore—she looked down to see a dressing over where the i/v had gone in.
“What time is it?” She looked around for a clock, but none was visible.
“You’ve been out for about four hours,” the attendant said helpfully. “Most of the drugs will be out of your system by now, but there’s no rush to get up.”
“Thank you ...” Internally, the Director groaned. Four hours! What had they managed to extract from her? Her only clear memories were of arriving in the room, being secured, and seeing Nina. After that, everything became warm, pink, and very fuzzy very quickly. She ed voices, questions, strange sensations flowing through her, but not what had been asked—nor what she might have replied. If the Questioner was good at her job—and the Director had no reason to doubt it—she could have found anything she knew to look for.
With a little difficult, she managed to sit up. “Do you have my clothes?”
“Right here.” The attendant indicated a table upon which the Director’s clothes were neatly folded, with her jacket held on a hangar. “Would you like help dressing?”
“No... no thank you.” The Director had enough to think of without making polite conversation while getting dressed.
“Very well. I will wait outside—please knock when you are ready. As I said, there is no rush.” With that bland reassurance, the attendant left, locking the door behind her.
The Director took stock of her body. Her head was still a little foggy, but her breasts and sex were tingling. She reached down between her legs and felt slickness—sniffing her fingers, a pleasant scent of lavender. Someone had carefully lotioned her ‘down there’.
She shrugged off the gown and started to dress, her thoughts racing. The Questioner must have found out something—but what? Why was she not in a jail cell—or worse? In abstract, she had to ire the mind-fuck that had been placed on her. What came next?
Finally dressed, and reasonably steady on her legs, she knocked.
“Thank you. Please come with me.” The attendant set off down the corridor. “The Minister asked to see you before you leave.”
More mind games! The Director fell in behind the attendant, frantically marshalling her thoughts. Was the “before you leave” just a bit of hope deliberately dangled in front of her?
The Minister—Sholpan—was still in her office, apparently working through a stack of paperwork. She looked up as the Director was escorted in, and gave a warm smile.
“How are you feeling, Director? I hope that my staff treated you well?” She indicated the chair. “Please, sit.”
The Director eased herself into the seat, mindful of the tenderness between her legs. “Fine, thank you, Minister. Everyone was very pleasant.”
“I’m so glad,” the Minister beamed. “And thank you so much for your cooperation.” Her tone turned somewhat arch. “Did you enjoy yourself?“
“It’s mostly a blur,” the Director itted, “but thank you for bringing in Nina. I do appreciate the gesture.”
“Nothing but the best!” Sholpan sat back in her chair and stretched. “Well, I hope you have a relaxing rest of your day. Please don’t hesitate to me if there’s anything I can help with.”
“Likewise, Minister.” The Director stood, smiling, and shook Sholpan’s proffered hand. Inside, though, she was screaming. What do you know? What did I say? Why are you letting me go?
“Why are we letting her go?” The Questioner consulted her notes. “I don’t presume to tell you your job, Minister, but honestly I can’t see the plan here. I hesitate to use the ‘T’ word, but ... subverting the Deputy Prime Minister? Really?“
“My dear, you are indeed very good at your job.” Sholpan patted her colleague’s hand. “You told me—indeed, you persuaded her to tell us—everything we needed to know. But, permit me my methods. This lady is a hero of the revolution, even if relatively few people know about her. Throwing her in jail for—oh, let’s see—subversion, illegal confinement, any number of violations of pharmacology istration—while initially satisfying, would gain us nothing.“
The Questioner looked at her boss, employing her hard-earned perception of tells. Sholpan apparently was telling the truth—though there was something else there, underlying it...
She decided to let it go. “Very good, Minister. I’ll keep working through our backlog.”
“Please do!” Sholpan smiled at her. “We really appreciate your work.”
The Director was relieved to sink into her office chair. Here, in this space, she was in control. The journey home had been colored by buzzing, angry thoughts, for which she had very few satisfactory answers.
She did her best to run an objective self-diagnosis. As far as she could tell, the drugs had mostly gone from her system—she was sipping from a large glass of cold water in front of her in order to help that along. Her lower body still felt strange, but that was only to be expected. She had eschewed romance, or indeed even commit-free romps, for a few years now as her body had started to move into the next phase of life, and having her entire erogenous system suddenly lit on fire was bound to have some lingering effects. She had run track at school, many years ago, and recognized the presence of something like the “runner’s high” inside her—but not quite the same.
Much more troubling to her was Sholpan’s apparent blasé reaction. She was racking her brain, trying to for the relaxed cheerfulness with which the Ministry had allowed her to depart. There was a small possibility that her planned resistance to the treatment had worked, but she rejected that out of hand—Sholpan would likely have been much more annoyed, had that been the case. No, she had to assume that Sholpan—and others in the Ministry—knew most of what she had done. Then came the obvious question—what did they want from her?
Blackmail? The Director considered this for a moment, then shook her head. She was already collaborating substantially with the Ministry in their new questioning programme, even loaning them her staff—look how that had turned out!—and it wasn’t clear that there was anything more she could do to assist. Even if there were, she wouldn’t have any reason to refuse to do it. Financial blackmail seemed less likely, if anything. Although the Director’s lesbian skills training import/export business was a profitable sideline, it was still likely peanuts compared to what a motivated politician could acquire in the country’s current level of corruption.
The only other reason she could think of, and it was an uncomfortable one to consider, was a matter of control. Perhaps Sholpan simply enjoyed having this implicit leverage over her? Although the position of Interior Minister came with a great deal of direct power by default, was it a turn-on for Sholpan to know she had the Director hooked like a fish, allowing her to dance at the end of the fishing line until Sholpan simply got tired, and then haul her in? She swallowed another gulp of water, and grimaced.
“Hello, Director.”
Startled, she looked up. Nina was standing in front of her, dressed in her civilian clothes, smiling.
“Nina? I didn’t hear you come in...” The Director tried to marshal her thoughts.
“You look like you have a lot on your mind, Director.” Nina walked around the desk, standing close enough that the Director could smell her perfume. “Do you this?”
Her hand slipped into the front of the Director’s blouse, soft fingers caressing the Director’s nipple. Taken aback by both the intrusion and the touch, she could only gasp as suddenly familiar sensations flooded back into her.
“There’s nothing to worry about.” Nina crouched down beside her confused employer. “It’s only natural to feel this way. You’ve been without this for a long time...” Now she unbuttoned the blouse with her other hand. “And today you found something that you know you’ve always wanted. Needed. Desired.” Her hand slipped under the Director’s skirt, unerringly locating her already moist slit. “Haven’t you?“
“I...” The Director still couldn’t think straight. Her body was reacting directly to Nina’s soft, skilled fingers, and rapidly moving away from the Director’s control. “I can’t...”
“Of course you can.” Nina put an arm behind the Director and guided her to her feet. “There’s nothing you can’t do, Director. All you need is the will.” She pressed her body against the Director, whose head was now swimming, her body full of treacherous hormones. “Why don’t you come with me?” She brushed the Director’s ear with her plump lips. “You have nothing to fear...“
As if in a dream, the Director was walked by Nina back to the girl’s room. With the door firmly closed, Nina guided the Director into the bedroom to sit on the bed.
“What’s happening to me?” the Director mumbled, mostly to herself, as Nina expertly slipped the Director’s skirt and panties to the floor. “I mustn’t...” A soft finger on her lips, and she was eased onto her back. “I... OH!” Nina made a single, precise movement of her finger, and lightning struck the Director midships.
“You are so clever, so wise,” whispered Nina, her hand playing a complex melody within the Director’s increasingly wet sex. “So expert in the human mind...” Her tongue teased the Director’s ear lobe. “But, my darling, you are now under my spell. A spell as old as womanhood...”
With her inhibitions accumulating on the carpet along with her remaining clothes, it wasn’t long before the helplessly horny Director was spread open, giving heaving sighs as Nina’s wicked tongue explored her depths. All rational thought gone, drunk on sexual stimulation, the Director was an instrument to be strummed, a hot mess of endorphins to be stirred. Bereft of words, she could only moan, squeal, and gasp while Nina demonstrated her virtuoso skills.
Finally, it was time, and the Director was fully aware of a new, intense blue fire inside herself that Nina had ignited, and the inhibitions it would ruthlessly burn away.
“You can feel it coming, can’t you?” said Nina mischievously, raising her head. “You know what I’ve got ready for you...” She bent back to her work, and the Director gave a groan so loud that it sounded like a wounded cow.
“Please, Nina...” She wasn’t sure what she was begging for, but she knew that she couldn’t ensure this for much longer.
The blue fire intensified, and now it was spreading from her center to the very tips of her fingers and toes. She felt sweat break out of her forehead and pour down her face. “Really!” she whimpered. “I... I...”
Nina finally landed her catch, and the Director screamed, a noise that she had never heard herself make. Her whole body a mass of jelly, a hot gush of honey filling her sex, and her arms wrapped so tightly around her own chest that she could barely breathe, she convulsed on the bed as the climax waves washed over her, submerging her, drowning her...
Nina surfaced, delicately dabbing the Director’s honey from her chin. Smiling to herself, she removed a syringe from a wallet on the bedside table, and pushed its contents into the Director’s trembling thigh, with barely any reaction from the overloaded woman.
“This should help you get nicely relaxed,” she murmured, quietly discarding the instrument in a sharps bin. She leaned over the Director and dabbed at the woman’s perspiration-soaked face with a soft cloth.
“How do I make you feel?” she breathed, letting her scent drift over the Director. “How does it feel to be taken by me, taken to far-away places, where the only thing that matters is what I do to the most secret, private parts of your soul?’
She continued to murmur reassurances, listening to the Director’s breathing slowly moving back to normal, holding the Director’s stunned gaze with her own. Her hands softly stroked the Director’s breasts, as if they were tender kittens, while she watched for the drug to take effect.
As the Director’s eyes finally glazed over, Nina rose from the bed and softly walked to open the bedroom door.
“She is fully under the hypnotic,” she murmured to a smiling Sholpan, as the woman silently padded into the room. “She went down like a little lamb.”
“Thank you, Nina.” Sholpan eased herself onto the bed, next to the Director’s head, and took the woman’s damp hand in her own. “Well now, my dear, after all the implantations you have done with your patients, I think it’s time that we put some new thoughts into you. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
She leaned down, and started to whisper in the Director’s ear.
Deep inside the Director’s mind, held open and pliable by the hypnotic drug, new thoughts and desires were slowly, lovingly, woven into the fabric of her soul...