Yes, he should

He thought about it hard, staring at the documents in his hands. The guilt gnawed at him for a second, the memories of her making breakfast when he was little, the way she used to smile before everything got so tight and angry after Dad died. But then he turned to look at his laptop screen. The hack had finished. The camera feeds loaded. There she was in the living room, still standing perfectly rigid, one hand saluting no one, blank eyes staring into nothing. His strict bitch of a mother, reduced to this.

His dick knew the answer before his brain finished debating. He was going to do it. No matter the cost. He had to see what he could get away with.

Alex looked back at the computer screen. There was another prompt now showing with a blinking accept button underneath it: Asset processing complete: Execute programming?

He took a deep breath and glanced at his laptop screen one more time. His mother was still standing there in the living room on the feed, rigid and blank. His finger hovered over the enter key for a second. Then he pressed it.

On the camera feed he saw his mother’s body relax just a little. She started moving again, shaking her head slowly like she was coming out of a deep daze. Alex watched with nervous eyes, hoping she wouldn’t be aware of what he had just done to her while she was frozen. To his relief, she just rubbed her head with one hand as she looked around the living room, confused. One thing Alex noticed right away was that she looked worried and on edge. Not angry. Not her usual strict disappointment. Something else. She immediately began grabbing at her pockets, patting them down, then started pulling the cushions off the couch, clearly searching for something.

Alex was confused for a second before it clicked. She was probably looking for the receiver he had found in the crate. The device that was now in his possession. He knew he had to act quick. If she kept searching like this she would eventually make her way up to the attic and the game would be up before it even started.

Quick on his feet, Alex grabbed the receiver and rushed down the attic stairs as quietly as he could. He darted into his mother’s bedroom, threw the receiver onto her bed so it landed naturally among the pillows and then made his way downstairs coolly, trying to act normal. When he entered the living room, his mother was desperately looking through her purse. The moment she heard him coming she turned toward him fast, hiding the purse behind her back.

“Alexei, uh… when did you come here,” she stammered.

What hit Alex harder than anything was her accent. He had always known his mother to have a very homegrown American accent, the kind that barely showed any Russian roots all these years. But right now, as she addressed him, she had a very strong Russian accent. It made his cock twitch and start getting hard again in his pants. Had his mother really changed that much already?

“Uhh yeah mom, just walked in,” Alex said, keeping his voice steady. “I think your phone was ringing in your room. I heard it buzzing while I was coming downstairs.”

His mother’s face shifted. She looked relieved. “Oh is that so? Many thanks to you Alexei! You’re a sweet child,” Natasha said as she walked closer to him. She brushed her hand through his hair with a fake-looking smile, her fingers lingering just a moment longer than normal. Then she quickly walked past him and headed up to her room, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

Alex stood there for a second and laughed quietly to himself. His mother never spoke like that. Never called him a ‘sweet child’ in that tone. Clearly the brainwashing had worked. She still knew who she was, still recognized him as her son, but she was an entirely different person now. The strict bitch who yelled at him for messy rooms was probably still in there somewhere, but only as a memory of who she used to be.

He ran back up to the attic. He wanted to see what his mother would be up to in her room. He sat down on the dusty floor, took his laptop on his lap and switched over to the feed of her bedroom camera. There she was, sitting on the edge of her bed, looking anxious as she held the receiver device in both hands. She was staring at the screen.

Alex looked over at the old computer. A new message had come through from her.