Helen shook her head. “I’m not taking it.”
“Why not?” His voice, even electronically enhanced, was soft, persuasive. “Are you afraid?”
“Of course not.” She wasn’t. She just didn’t like the feeling of being helpless. “I already know what you’re trying to achieve. You want me totally in your control. You want me afraid, or are trying to make me afraid. Am I right or wrong?”
“Somewhat, Elena. If I ask you to take off your clothes now, would you?”
She cocked her head in the dark. “No.”
“Why not? It’s totally dark in the CAVE and I promise it won’t hurt.”
“Look, I know what you’re trying to do,” Helen said, exasperated now. “It isn’t working. You’re trying to find chinks in my psyche and I’ve been trained to resist. You aren’t going to win.”
“But why are you resisting your trainer? Wouldn’t it be simpler to go along with it, knowing what I’m going to do, and then following through with today’s training lesson? Why the need to tell me that you aren’t going to lose? Or, are you just afraid, Elena, that you will lose?”
Oh, he was good. Whoever her new trainer was, he definitely wasn’t just some Special Forces guy or CIA shrink trying to beat her into shape mentally or physically. This man was trying to figure her out by pushing her sexual buttons. The thing was, she couldn’t figure out why he was doing it…yet. It’d only been a couple of weeks, but already he’d challenged her more than any of her other trainers, both physically and mentally.
“Okay, fine.” She popped the pill into her mouth, crushed it between her teeth because she was that pissed off. She wanted to taste its bitterness. “I’m not going to be very happy if you start taking my clothes off again when I wake up. I’m tired of it. That’s a warning.”
“Then I’ll make sure they’re already off before you wake up.”
“You…” She didn’t even have time to finish cursing him, falling forward as the world spun into darkness.
When Helen came to, she didn’t say anything, using the time to figure out what he was trying to do. Again, she couldn’t see the person carrying her. This time, she was in his arms, the way a man carried a lover, and he was walking slowly. She heard the lapping of water. Splashing at his feet. He kept walking.
She knew it was useless but she still tried to move. She really, really hated this feeling. She felt the water touching her bare buttocks. She gasped—both from the cold water and her outrage that she was indeed “naked”—as he took both of them deeper into the water.
“I’m so going to kill you,” she said between her teeth. “I told you not…”
She gasped again as he let go of her. She sank, water getting into her mouth. She couldn’t move; she was going to drown.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real! You got to keep your head!She realized now that he’d purposely done the one thing he knew would distract her—making her think he undressed her. She needed to remember that virtual reality was all in the mind. He was pushing her to accept this, getting her ready for the next phase.
Willing her panic and anger away, Helen relaxed, allowing her body to float. He was her trainer; he wasn’t going to let her drown. Just as she reasoned this to herself, she felt his arms gather around her, pulling her upward to the surface. Her face burst through the water and she took deep breaths of air into her lungs as she felt him lifting her higher, till her chin rested on his shoulder. She coughed, very aware of his arms around her nude body.
“Total immersive virtual reality between two people is going to be different from going solo, Elena,” he said softly in her ear. “I give you the reality that you have to accept in your mind. Just as I have to accept what you see when you remote view because if my mind rejects it, then this experiment will fail. You have to get very comfortable with whatever reality I provide here, just as I have to do the same with the reality you say you see when you remote view. Am I making sense to you?”
“Yes.” But that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“The nudity is just a little quarrel between us. I know you don’t feel comfortable when you aren’t in control, I totally understand that, and that’s why you are naked now, in the water, in my control because you have to get comfortable with this notion.”
“Only in virtual reality,” she assured him sharply.
“That’s fine.”
They were still in the water. She shivered. How deep was the water?Not real, Helen, it’s not real.She breathed slowly, steadily. Fine, she got the lesson, so she would shut up and just let the drug do its thing until she was able to move again.
His hand came behind her neck, gently turning her head up. Looking at his shadowy form was the most frustrating thing after the fact that she was in someone’s control.
“Do you know what made you even madder than being stripped naked by someone?”
“I’m not stripped naked. It’s all in my head,” she said, and tried to smile nonchalantly, “so I’m not mad at all since none of this is real.”
“Then you aren’t allowed to lose your temper if I kiss you again,” he whispered, his head coming down on hers.
And there was nothing she could do as she floated in his arms, nothing at all, as the hand behind her neck firmly forced her head back. He explored her mouth intimately, his tongue tangling with hers.
He was enjoying this too much, she thought dazedly, even as she fought against her own response. He liked being in control of her and the more she fought him, the more ways he would find to get at her. It was all standard operating procedure in the book of mind manipulation. But, besides what he was claiming to be doing, what else was he trying to manipulate her to do?
