The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Jennifer and Rachel walked the same streets David had used to follow them.

Office lights glowed above the sidewalks. Cars moved through the intersections. People left restaurants, checked messages, raised devices toward buildings and one another. Glass storefronts reflected pieces of the street—the ing headlights, the women walking side by side, strangers moving behind them.

Jennifer watched the screens more than the faces. She did not stop.

Rachel held her phone low as they crossed the final intersection. She shared her live location with Mara, added the studio address, and typed that they were entering together. If neither woman checked in within ninety minutes, Mara was to call the police and give them everything she had. She showed Jennifer the message before sending it. Jennifer read it and nodded.

They continued another half block.

David’s building stood ahead of them. Light showed through the gaps around the blinds of the studio.

Jennifer stopped beneath the awning. Rachel stopped with her.

For several seconds neither looked toward the door.

Jennifer turned to Rachel.

“Still yes?”

Rachel’s face was pale, but her answer came without hesitation.

“Yes. You?”

“Yes.”

They entered the building.

The hallway smelled faintly of cleaning solution and old paint. Rachel raised her hand to knock. Before her knuckles touched the wood, the studio door opened.

David stood on the other side. Dark shirt, gray tros. Nothing about his appearance suggested urgency.

“You came,” he said.

Jennifer looked past him and studied the room.

The studio had been rearranged. The gray backdrop was down across the shooting area. Two lights stood at measured angles. A professional film camera waited on a tripod. The floor-length posing mirror near the styling station was angled partly toward the set. The workstation was active, a small black drive protruding from the side of the computer. The darkroom door was closed.

She took in the positions of the camera, the mirror, and the workstation before she stepped forward.

David stepped aside, but his attention stayed on them. He looked at their faces, the light makeup, the clothes they had worn to the park. He studied them the way he studied a subject before the first frame, measuring how close they already were to the image he intended to take.

Jennifer hesitated in the doorway, looking from David to the room beyond him. Rachel did the same. Only then did Jennifer step inside. Rachel followed close behind and set her shoulder bag beside the door.

David closed the door. He did not lock it.

That frightened Jennifer more than a lock would have. He wanted the room to remain technically open. He wanted them to know they could walk out, as though the existence of the door made everything inside the studio voluntary.

David moved toward the camera.

“The are the same as the message. One portrait. Film. You choose the pose. When it is finished, I will give you the materials involving both of you and delete the current project while you watch. After that, there will be no further .”

“You keep the new photograph,” Jennifer said.

“Yes.”

“And we trust you to decide what counts as all the other material.”

“I will give you what concerns you.”

Rachel remained beside Jennifer. “Everything in your possession concerns us.”

David’s attention shifted briefly toward her. “The point of this is to end the dispute, not begin another inventory.”

Jennifer looked at the film camera. “You still think this can be voluntary.”

“You came.”

“Coming through the door is not consent to everything inside it.”

“You will choose the pose.”

He said it as though that settled the question.

Jennifer let the silence remain. She wanted him to believe the answer had been sufficient. They needed him calm. They needed him certain that whatever resistance remained could still be organized into the picture he had planned.

David gestured toward the backdrop.

“Stand there.”

Jennifer and Rachel moved into the light.

David studied them without raising the camera.

“Closer.”

They moved until their shoulders touched.

“Rachel, stand slightly behind her.”

“No,” Jennifer said.

David looked at her.

“You said we choose the pose.”

“I’m giving you direction.”

“You said we choose.”

Rachel stepped even with Jennifer. “This is the pose.”

She turned her body only enough to face the camera naturally. Jennifer did the same. Neither stood behind the other. Their shoulders touched lightly.

David looked at their hands.

“Put one arm around her.”

“No,” Rachel said.

He took a slow breath. “The image requires connection.”

Jennifer held out her hand between them.

Rachel looked at it before taking it.

Their fingers rested together without interlocking. Neither pulled the other closer.

“This is the connection,” Jennifer said.

David studied the pose. Two women standing beside each other. Equal height in the frame. Equal distance from the camera. Their ed hands visible between them. No embrace. No tilted heads. No physical surrender disguised as intimacy.

He did not like it.

But he had promised them the pose.

He nodded once.

“Hold that.”

Rachel asked to see the frame.

David’s attention sharpened. “Why?”

“You said this was a portrait, not another demonstration.”

“It is.”

“Then let me see what you’re taking.”

For a moment she thought he might refuse. Then his expression changed. He wanted her approval—not enough to accept real correction, but enough to want the finished image recognized as technically sound.

He stepped away from the tripod.

Rachel approached the camera. It was a professional 35mm SLR fitted with a lens wide enough for the full-length composition. The film had already been loaded. David had marked the tripod position on the floor with tape.

Rachel bent to the viewfinder.

The frame held Jennifer clearly. Her complete body was visible, but the lower edge ran too close beneath her shoes. The space beside her—where Rachel would stand—was empty and cramped against the left side of the frame. The mirror appeared as a thin bright strip along the right edge. Rachel’s own reflection occupied part of it. Her face was visible behind the camera. One shoulder and one arm disappeared outside the frame. The tripod divided her torso. Her legs were cut below the knees.

It was not enough.

Rachel straightened and looked at David.

“You’re too tight.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re clipping the floor.”

“The floor isn’t part of the portrait.”

“It is if you want a full-length image. Her left shoe is almost against the edge, and the space for me is compressed.”

“I can crop afterward.”

“You can’t add what you never photographed.”

David looked through the viewfinder himself.

Rachel kept her attention on Jennifer’s shoes and the backdrop. She did not look toward the mirror.

“The spacing is wrong,” she said. “Move the camera back.”

“The lens is appropriate.”

“The lens is fine. The composition isn’t.”

David remained behind the camera. His jaw tightened.

Rachel waited. A professional who kept defending an obvious composition appeared uncertain. David could tolerate disagreement more easily than uncertainty.

He released the tripod lock and moved it back several inches.

Rachel looked again. The space around Jennifer had improved, but the frame still cut part of the reflected legs.

“More floor.”

“That adds dead space.”

“You can crop it later.”

David’s mouth tightened at hearing his own answer returned to him. He did not move at once.

“You’re asking me to waste negative space for a floor no one will see.”

“I’m asking you to photograph the full figure. That is what you said this was.”

He held the position a moment longer, then moved the tripod back again.

Rachel stepped into the frame beside Jennifer and shifted both of them slightly toward the left side of the backdrop.

“Here. The balance is cleaner.”

She returned to the viewfinder for a final look.

Jennifer and the empty space where Rachel would stand were now properly centered. Both pairs of shoes would be clear. Bare studio floor extended beneath them. At the outer edge of the mirror, the reflection now showed her complete figure from head to shoes—face unobstructed, both arms visible, the camera occupying the space in front of the chest, shoulders, hands, legs, and the floor around the tripod all inside the frame.

The image contained what they needed.

That did not mean the system would recognize it.

She stepped away from the camera and returned to Jennifer. Their hands ed again. Rachel gave no sign that anything had changed.

David returned to the viewfinder. His reflected face looked back at him from the mirror’s edge. He saw it. Rachel watched his eye move across the frame. He paused on the bright strip and adjusted the camera by less than an inch, but the reflection remained.

“I’ll crop the mirror afterward,” he said.

Rachel stood with Jennifer, hands lightly ed, and said nothing.

David crossed to the workstation.

The park photograph appeared on the screen. Jennifer and Rachel stood inside it before they had discovered him, turned toward one another with the ease he had watched and decided to complete. Two subject outlines appeared. The status remained gray.

PREVIEW

David opened a saved expression. Their photographed faces changed. Jennifer’s mouth lifted first. Rachel’s followed. The expressions were different enough to fit their individual features but shared the same polished certainty.

Rachel recognized the depth of it. The smile was stronger than the one he had imposed at the summit. It appeared calm, deliberate, and unmistakably pleased.

David selected both subject markers. He looked directly at the prepared source and pressed CHANGE.

The border turned red.

LIVE

Pressure entered Rachel’s cheeks. It began near the corners of her mouth and spread upward. Her lips curved before she could stop them. The muscles along her cheeks tightened. The expression settled as though her face were being held from beneath the skin.

Beside her, Jennifer’s mouth lifted into the same controlled pleasure.

Their eyes remained free.

Jennifer looked at Rachel. Fear was there. So was recognition. Both of them were already smiling.

David turned from the monitor.

“The pose is yours,” he said. “The expression is the part you never finish. I’m finishing it for you.”

Jennifer’s fingers tightened around Rachel’s.

“We chose the pose. You don’t get to choose our faces.”

“You interrupt the expression before it becomes clear.”

“We stopped because we chose to stop.”

David’s attention stayed on the image. “That distinction will not be visible.”

“It was visible to us.”

“That isn’t what the finished photograph will show.”

“No,” Jennifer said. “It never is.”

Rachel pressed Jennifer’s fingers once. Jennifer returned the pressure. The remained light. Chosen. Entirely separate from the smiles fixed above it.

David saw the movement. Something in his shoulders loosened, as though he had taken the pressure between their hands for acceptance. The imposed smiles appeared to confirm what he already believed about them.

Rachel kept looking at Jennifer. The smile said yes. Her eyes did not.

David returned to the camera. He checked the frame. Rachel watched him through the mirror. His reflection remained complete, the camera raised between him and the women.

He placed one finger on the shutter release.

The studio became quiet.

One controlled click broke the silence.

The sound was small. No motor drive. No repeated exposures. No mechanical burst following a woman as she tried to turn away.

David lifted his finger from the shutter release and stepped back from the camera, visibly satisfied. To him, the single exposure seemed to prove restraint.

David pressed the rewind release and turned the crank until the tension disappeared. Then he opened the camera back and removed the film canister.

“I’ll develop it now.”

The smiles remained fixed.

David entered the darkroom and closed the door. Rachel heard the light-tight latch settle into place. Water began running. Metal touched metal. The familiar sequence of film processing started behind the door.

Jennifer released Rachel’s hand. The choice belonged to her. Rachel let her.

They remained near the backdrop. The workstation was less than twenty feet away. The old project was still Live. Undo was visible on the screen. They could have crossed the room and pressed it. They could have closed the source. They could have tried to delete it. But the final negative did not yet exist as a usable source. David had to develop it, scan it, load it into Likeness, and activate it himself. Interrupting the process now would leave them with the old photograph, a theory they had never tested, and David still capable of beginning again through another image.

Waiting felt like obedience. It was not.

The smiles strained Rachel’s cheeks. She pressed her lips together, but the expression returned around the pressure. Jennifer rolled one shoulder and looked toward the darkroom.

“Was he there?” she asked. The smile made the question sound almost amused.

“Yes.”

“Enough?”

Rachel ed the viewfinder. David’s reflected body. The bare floor around his feet. The camera dividing part of his torso. She did not know what Likeness required.

“I don’t know.”

Jennifer looked toward the workstation. “Do you think the power comes from Likeness?”

Rachel listened to David working behind the darkroom door. “The program changes the image. I don’t know what makes the image reach us.”

“Maybe he doesn’t either.”

“He knows which steps produce a result. That isn’t the same as knowing why they work.”

Jennifer looked toward the mirror. The smile made the movement feel wrong on her face. “He learned only what helped him control someone.”

“And ignored everything else inside the frame.”

“So we’re depending on something he never bothered to understand.”

Rachel looked at her. “We’re depending on the picture seeing more than he does.”

They waited.

The darkroom process continued. Chemicals poured. The tank rotated. Water ran again. David worked with the same calm precision he brought to everything else.

Rachel looked toward the mirror. It reflected the two of them standing beneath the lights, their smiles dominating every other detail. They looked calm, pleased, finished. At the edge, the space where David had stood remained vacant. The photograph had already been taken. Only the negative would show whether his reflection had been clear enough.

The darkroom door opened after the film dryer stopped.

David emerged carrying a dry strip of negatives in one gloved hand and four photographs in the other. Jennifer recognized their natural park image on top. Beneath it were the three portraits he had used as studies.

He placed the photographs beside the workstation and arranged them in a row. The park image went in the center. The three women surrounded it, each representing one part of the result he had been trying to perfect.

David held the negative strip beneath the inspection light. There was only one exposure from the sitting. He had not bracketed it. He trusted the result.

He moved to the scanner, secured the negative inside the film holder, and started the scan.

Jennifer and Rachel stepped away from the backdrop and crossed to the workstation, drawn by the photographs David had arranged beside the monitor. Their hands remained lightly ed, and the smiles still held their faces. As David reopened the older park project, Rachel watched his hand move toward the controls, hoping he would keep his promise.

He pressed UNDO.

The pressure left Rachel’s face. Her mouth relaxed so quickly that her lips parted. She moved her jaw, then lowered the corners deliberately. Her face obeyed. Jennifer touched one cheek, flexed her mouth, and drew a full breath. Their expressions were free again.

When the scan finished, David enlarged the center of the new scan, checking the focus on their faces. He glanced between the screen and the photographs beside it—the first woman’s fixed smile, the second woman’s aligned gaze, the third woman’s carefully positioned hands. He appeared to be measuring the new portrait against each of them.

He imported the scan into Likeness. The program began analyzing the frame.

An outline settled around Jennifer.

SUBJECT 1

A second outline settled around Rachel.

SUBJECT 2

At the edge of the image, a third line appeared around David’s reflected shoes.

Rachel leaned closer to the monitor.

The outline climbed his legs in short segments, then stalled where one arm overlapped the tripod. For a moment, Rachel thought it had lost him. The line reappeared at his wrist, crossed his shoulders, and rose toward his head.

She waited for it to close.

The final segment ed above his reflection.

SUBJECT 3

Rachel looked at Jennifer. The glance lasted less than a second. Jennifer saw it.

David’s attention paused on the third marker.

“Background detection,” he said. “I’ll crop it after confirmation.”

The program had drawn a complete outline around him. He still called it background.

Jennifer looked at the photographs spread beside the monitor. She could see the blurred makeup beneath the first woman’s eyes, the rigid attention in the second woman’s gaze, and the tension held in the third woman’s fingers. None of them looked calm.

She looked back at David.

“Who are they?”

David turned toward her.

“Studies.”

“They’re women.”

“They established what the final image required.”

“What did they establish?”

“Separate variables. Expression under movement. Gaze alignment. Stability.”

Jennifer looked at the first woman’s blurred makeup.

“How long fear lasts under a smile?”

“That isn’t what the photograph shows.”

“It’s the only thing it shows.”

David stepped away from the workstation and stopped directly in front of Jennifer. He looked straight into her eyes.

“The first composition failed because resistance remained visible. That does not mean the process caused harm. It means the elements were not coordinated.”

“You made three more women afraid because our fear wasn’t convincing enough.”

“Their physical states were restored.”

“You keep saying restored as though they can forget.”

“They returned to normal.”

Jennifer’s voice sharpened. “And that is all you count. That they returned to normal. As if nothing else was taken.”

David’s attention narrowed on Jennifer.

While he faced her, Rachel clicked the microphone icon, leaned toward the screen, and whispered, “Select only Subject Three. Apply the corrected smile and hold the recorded pose.”

The first two markers dimmed. David’s reflected outline brightened. At the edge of the mirror, his photographed mouth lifted, his shoulders squared, and his hands settled against the camera in the pose recorded on film. The change was small and far from the center of the frame. Nothing obvious revealed that the pending edit had been redirected.

Jennifer kept him talking. Her voice had lost its earlier control.

“You are treating everything you cannot photograph as though it does not exist.”

“The final image will show what the sitting produced.”

“It will show what you forced. Nothing else.”

“You chose the pose.”

“We chose the pose.” Jennifer’s volume rose. “You chose the lie. You always choose the lie.”

David’s face had gone tight. He looked at the scan, then back at her.

Jennifer took one step closer.

“Then show me.”

David turned to the workstation and looked directly at the complete source. His hand moved toward the controls.

He glanced back at Jennifer, anger tightening his face. Then his eyes snapped to the source as he pressed CHANGE.

The border turned red.

Rachel waited for the pressure to return to her face. Nothing happened. Jennifer remained unchanged.

David’s angry expression held for another second. Then the left corner of his mouth began to rise.

His brow stayed drawn as the right corner followed, pulling his mouth into a smile that did not belong with the anger in his eyes. His cheeks lifted. The tension left his forehead. The smile settled into the same polished pleasure he had imposed on Elise, Jennifer, Rachel, and the women in the photographs beside the monitor.

His gaze shifted toward the camera’s position within the image. His shoulders squared. His hands lifted from the workstation and came together in front of him, matching the pose of his reflection.

He stared at Jennifer and Rachel, the anger now trapped behind the smile.

Then he touched his face.

The smile was already there. He understood a moment later, too late to stop it.

He tried to raise one hand toward his mouth. The arm did not obey. He tried to step back. His feet stayed planted in the exact position the photograph had recorded. Only then did he open his mouth.

Rachel spoke first.

“Close the model’s mouth.”

His real mouth shut before the word formed. The jaw followed. The smile remained fixed in the corners and cheeks. Only a choked sound escaped.

Jennifer stepped between him and the workstation. He strained against the posture that held him facing the camera. The image kept him in place.

Rachel kept her eyes on him.

“Keep going,” Jennifer said.

“Move the model’s arms behind his hips.”

On the monitor the reflected arms began to travel backward. David’s real arms pulled in the same direction. He resisted hard enough that one shoulder twisted, but the active image corrected him. His hands locked behind him.

“Lower the model’s knees.”

The reflected knees bent. David’s legs followed. He lost balance and dropped partway before the generated movement steadied him. His body lowered onto the bare floor shown in the mirror. He landed awkwardly on one hip, then settled into the represented position. Nothing held him except the image.

He tried to rise. On the screen the reflected body remained seated. His real body lifted several inches, distorted against the source, and returned to the floor.

David’s eyes remained open. Fear had replaced every trace of authority above the smile. His mouth stayed closed. His arms remained behind him.

Jennifer looked at him. For the first time, he was fully conscious inside an expression he had chosen for someone else.

They remained where they were for a moment, catching their breath.

“It found him,” Jennifer said.

Rachel nodded.

David made another sound behind his smile. Jennifer glanced toward the open darkroom door. Rachel followed her look.

They left him on the floor and entered the darkroom together.

The room was larger than it had looked from the doorway. A proof table held working prints and handwritten notes. Shelves along the opposite wall were filled with black binders. Women’s names ran down the spines in the same neat hand.

Jennifer found their binder.

JENNIFER & RACHEL

The café. The concourse. The park. The near-kiss. The confrontation. Still frames from the public video. Jennifer at the summit with the forced smile. Images from the studio demonstration. Notes about their resistance. Notes about Rachel’s attention to the interface. He had documented the moment Jennifer said no and classified it as a technical condition.

Jennifer stared at the page.

“He wrote it all down.”

She closed the binder.

“We leave it. All of it.”

Rachel nodded and moved to the lower shelf. A separate black binder stood apart from the others, older and thicker, with one worn corner. The spine read:

ELISE

Rachel removed it.

The first page held a professional portrait of a woman facing the camera as her smile began to fade. The next showed pencil marks at the corners of her mouth. The smile became stronger. Then stronger again. The sheet followed. Frame after frame showed Elise turning away, covering her mouth, pulling at the corners with her fingers, reaching toward the camera, and finally staring directly into the lens. The smile remained almost unchanged. Her eyes did not.

Jennifer recognized the expression at once. She had worn the weaker version at the summit and the stronger one less than half an hour earlier. David was wearing it now.

Rachel found the notes. The first change had occurred after Elise rejected the correction. David recorded that she had said no before he strengthened it. Another note described her attempt to seize the print. Another stated that the continuous sequence had ended only because the film ran out. Near the bottom of the page he had written that erasing the alteration restored voluntary control.

Jennifer read the sentence twice.

“He knew.”

“From the beginning.”

“He knew she wanted him to stop.”

“Yes.”

“He made it stronger anyway.”

“Yes.”

Jennifer looked at the sheet.

“He used her face on us.”

“He used what he did to her.”

The binder contained Elise’s full name, the agency that had represented her, an old address, telephone numbers, session dates, and correspondence with her manager.

Jennifer closed it.

“Was she the first?”

Rachel looked at the shelves.

“Yes.”

Jennifer held the binder against her body.

“We take this one.”

“This belongs with the evidence.”

“It belongs with her first.”

Rachel understood. Elise had already lost control of the session, the images, and the record David kept afterward. Jennifer would not leave her first to an investigator arriving with photographs of her terror. The other binders remained evidence. This one could still be returned.

Jennifer carried the ELISE binder back into the studio.

David remained on the floor, arms still held behind him, mouth closed. His eyes followed the binder. Jennifer saw him recognize it. He stopped struggling.

Rachel returned to the workstation. The red border remained.

LIVE

Jennifer looked at David, then at Rachel.

“If he can see, he can start again.”

“He needs his eyes to take the source and activate it,” Rachel said.

Jennifer looked at David’s closed mouth. The smile was still Elise’s. His jaw remained locked.

“He needs to be able to speak. He can answer for what’s in those binders.”

Rachel looked at the screen. “Then only his eyes remain changed.”

They both understood what that meant. The change would be permanent.

Jennifer looked at Rachel.

“We close his eyes. We remove the smile and release everything else. Then we destroy the source.”

Fear remained in David’s eyes.

Rachel looked at him, then at Jennifer.

“Are we doing this?”

“I am,” Jennifer said. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

Rachel touched the microphone icon and stepped aside. Jennifer kept her eyes on David.

“Close Subject Three’s eyes completely. Lower the gaze.”

David’s eyelids began to close. He fought the movement. They narrowed, opened a fraction, then continued downward until both eyes disappeared.

His smile remained fixed. His mouth remained closed. His arms stayed behind him, and his body remained on the floor.

Rachel took a roll of black gaffer tape from the worktable. Jennifer kept watch while Rachel knelt behind him and bound his wrists first. The image still held his arms in place; the tape only confirmed the position.

“Release the body. Keep the arms locked.”

The hold on his legs and torso ended. David’s weight settled more heavily onto the floor. He tried to draw his knees up. Rachel caught both ankles and bound them together before he could separate them. The image continued to hold his arms until she finished and stood.

She returned to the microphone.

“Remove the expression. Keep the mouth closed.”

The corners of David’s mouth lowered. The tension left his cheeks. The smile disappeared, but his lips remained sealed.

“Release the arms.”

The remaining hold ended. David pulled against the tape and twisted on the floor, but he could not free his hands or bring his feet apart.

Rachel looked at Jennifer.

“Release Subject Three’s mouth and jaw.”

David’s lips parted on a sharp breath. He closed them again, then moved his jaw.

Rachel selected DELETE.

A warning appeared.

LIVE SESSION ACTIVE

DELETE WITHOUT UNDO?

She confirmed.

The project disappeared. The red border vanished with it.

David’s eyes remained closed.

“Undo it.” The words came out rough and urgent. He twisted against the tape and raised his head toward the workstation. “Undo it now.”

Jennifer moved between him and the computer.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“We know what Undo does,” Rachel said.

“You can’t leave me like this.”

Rachel shut down Likeness.

“Undo it. You still have the source.”

“For now,” Rachel said.

She removed the black encrypted drive from the computer and carried it into the darkroom.

Jennifer remained with David. He twisted against the tape and turned his head toward Rachel’s footsteps.

“What is she doing?”

Jennifer did not answer.

From the darkroom came the scrape of something hard being positioned beneath the print cutter.

David went still.

“You restored their bodies every time you pressed Undo,” Jennifer said.

“That is not what Undo does.”

“You decided it erased what you had done.”

The blade of the darkroom print cutter fell.

The drive casing split beneath it. Pieces struck the floor and skittered across the darkroom.

David jerked toward the sound.

Rachel retrieved the broken circuit board, cut through it with the heavy darkroom shears, then crushed the memory chips beneath the steel base of a light stand.

David flinched at every blow.

Jennifer set the ELISE binder on the workstation and moved to the scanner. She opened the film holder and removed the negative strip.

The single exposure showed Jennifer and Rachel beneath the lights, the mirror at the edge of the frame, and David reflected inside it.

Jennifer carried the negative into the darkroom. The scissors scraped across the proof table as she picked them up.

David turned toward the sound.

“Don’t.”

She cut through the frame. The first cut divided the mirror from the women. The second ed through David’s reflected torso. She cut the negative again, separating his head, hands, and legs. Then she placed the pieces emulsion-side up on the proof table and scraped away the image.

She left every other negative untouched for the police.

Rachel returned to the studio and placed the broken pieces of the drive beside the computer. Jennifer followed.

David remained on the floor, his wrists and ankles bound. His face held no smile. He raised his head toward their footsteps and strained to open his eyes, but his eyelids stayed closed.

“What have you done?”

He could speak, move, think, and . He could answer the police and explain the contents of the darkroom. He could not see another source or activate Likeness.

Jennifer approached until she stood a few feet away. David turned toward the sound of her steps.

“We told you to leave us alone.”

David opened his mouth to answer, but Jennifer had already turned away.

Rachel placed the ELISE binder inside her shoulder bag. Jennifer opened the studio door, and they left.

“Jennifer,” David called after them.

They continued down the hallway.

“Rachel.”

They did not stop.

Once they were outside and the building door had closed behind them, Rachel called the officer who knew where they were.

“We’re outside. David is still in the studio. He’s alive and conscious, but he can’t open his eyes. His wrists and ankles are bound with tape.”

“Is he armed?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t see a weapon.”

“What’s inside the studio?”

“Photographs, negatives, and binders containing records about women.”

The officer told them to remain outside and keep anyone from entering. Police and medical personnel were on their way.

“The studio door is unlocked,” Rachel said.

“Stay where you are.”

Rachel ended the call. Jennifer called Mara and told her they were safely outside.

Neither woman spoke while they waited.

A police car turned onto the street and pulled to the curb in front of the building.

David shifted on the floor and felt the tape tighten around his wrists and ankles. The studio no longer existed as an image. It had become a confusion of hard flooring, distant equipment, and sounds he could not place.

The workstation was silent. The door remained open. Jennifer and Rachel were gone.

He called for help. His voice carried into the hallway, but no one answered.

Sirens stopped outside the building. Car doors opened. Voices entered the lobby below, followed by footsteps moving toward the stairs.

David raised his head toward the sound.

The footsteps reached the hallway. Someone called his name. The studio door opened wider.

David faced it and saw nothing.