She can do her bit to help

Zack’s voice cut across the room.

“Mrs Hayes! Get the fuck over here! Supremo’s down, we need you to stop the Mind Melter before he finishes us all!”

Nadia stood near the door where she’d been rooted since Elena hit the floor. The gray sweater still covered her from neck to hips. Her glasses sat slightly crooked on her nose. Mrs. Reed’s leftover moans and the wet sound of Zack shifting on top of her filled the gaps between her heartbeats. Elena lay on her back a few feet away, massive tits still spilled out of the plain black latex corset, the shrugged-off shirt hanging from the tucked waistband of her pencil skirt like a ruined rag. Rick knelt where Madame Supremo had left him, jeans open, cock wet and softening, the blindfold still tied around his eyes. The clown-masked man hadn’t moved. He just watched Nadia from behind that cheap plastic grin.

“I–I’m not…” Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. “I’m no superheroine like Elena. I’m a psychologist. I don’t have powers. This is insane. We need to call campus security. Or the police. Someone who can actually–”

Zack didn’t let her finish. He was sitting on Mrs Reed like she was a piece of furniture, one hand resting on the small of her back, the teacher still on all fours with her cheek to the carpet and that empty, blissed-out look on her face. For some reason it didn't seem strange to Nadia, surely the Mind Melter was making him do that too? He pointed at Nadia without bothering to look away from the masked man.

“You have just forgotten who you are! Just like Mrs Moreno!”

The words landed in the middle of Nadia’s skull and detonated with a burst of memories.

Flashes, sharp and unwelcome.

A woman in a long midnight-purple cape edged with black feathers that pointed straight up like a crown. Spiral stickers over both nipples and a larger one covering her cunt. Six-inch black heels. Dark, smeared makeup. The smell of old cum and piss baked into her own skin. The way the pussy sticker had peeled and a thick rope of semen had slid down her thigh. The spiral piercings that were already healed because they had been there for weeks. A voice that wasn’t quite hers purring about recruiting, about using her training, about adding more mothers to the greatest club on earth.

Who was she?

Nadia reached up and took her glasses off. She folded the arms with shaking fingers and slipped them into the pocket of the sweater she was wearing. She shook her head hard, once, twice, as if she could rattle the images loose and make them fall out of her ears.

“Madame Hypnotica!”

Zack and Rick spoke at the same time, voices overlapping like they’d practiced the line in a mirror.

“Only you can save us now!!”

The room tilted.

Nadia’s mind folded inward.

She was standing in a space that wasn’t a space. Black and gold. Chains hanging from nowhere, swaying without wind. The air was thick and warm, like someone else’s breath. The floor, if it was a floor, felt like warm glass under her bare feet.

On her left, wrapped in glowing golden chains that bit into her wrists, her ankles, her throat, kneeling on nothing, was herself.

The real her.

Glasses still on. Gray sweater. Dark jeans. Tears cutting clean tracks down her golden-brown cheeks. That Nadia looked up and her mouth moved, desperate, words tumbling out too fast.

“It’s the club. It’s all the club. Zack planned this. Rick planned this. They never let you wake up, they just let you think you did so the fall would hurt more. The stickers, the cape, the piercings, those aren’t a costume you put on, they’re what they left on you after they used you. Jaden tried to warn you. You were supposed to protect him. Don’t listen to her. Don’t–”

The words vanished. Sound died the instant she tried to explain the mechanism. Her lips kept moving but nothing came out except a thin, useless rasp. The golden chains tightened another notch.

“She is useless. Do not listen to her.”

The voice came from the shadows to the right. Low. Certain. Familiar in the way a song is familiar when you’ve heard it hundreds of times before.

A second figure stepped into the gold light.