Early Bird Reward Story: "You've Got the Look"! (MC FF) (Patreon)

Hi all! Here's this week's Early Bird Reward story. Enjoy!

"You've Got the Look"

"Excuse me, miss?" Maddy felt the tap on her shoulder just as she was about to wonder if the words were intended for her, and she turned to see a tall white woman in a severe gray pantsuit looking at her with a serious expression on her chiseled features. At least, Maddy assumed the stranger was looking at her--the other woman's gaze was hidden behind mirrored sunglasses that reflected the bewildered expression in Maddy's bright blue eyes right back at her. It was an appearance that so clearly conveyed authority, right down to the dark hair cropped in a sober, professional bob, that Maddy barely even looked at the badge the woman flashed. She skipped straight to wondering what she'd done to attract the attention of Interpol in the middle of her vacation.

She didn't wait long to find out. "I'm sorry, ma'am," the woman said in a crisp British accent, reaching out to grip Maddy firmly by the elbow. "I'm afraid you need to come with me. Please don't be alarmed, you're not in any trouble. It's a strictly precautionary measure." She turned to leave, steering the smaller woman away from the museum tour group with a calm, confident strength that caught her so completely off guard that Maddy didn't even try to pull away. She stumbled to keep up instead, glancing at passers by with a nervous smile that she hoped made it clear that this was all probably a big misunderstanding.

The agent led her quickly down to the lower level and across to the parking ramp, resolutely ignoring Maddy's questions. "What is this all about?", "Where are we going?", "Can I have my phone back?"... all of them were met with the same stony silence. The last one came after Maddy tried to take out her smartphone to let her friends know that the plan for the afternoon was probably going to be changing, only to have the taller woman pluck it from her hand. It went into the breast pocket of the stranger's immaculate gray pantsuit. Maddy wanted to grab it back, but it felt like just thinking about it might be a felony.

The agent stopped next to a black Audi A4 and pulled out a key fob, tapping it to unlock the car doors and angling her head in the direction of the passenger side. "If I could just ask you to get in the vehicle, ma'am? I'll be able to explain more at our destination." Maddy's eyes darted to the left and right, momentarily entertaining the idea of refusing or making a break for it, but the taller woman was blocking the only way out and Maddy didn't like the idea of pushing past her. Not if this really was all just some sort of misunderstanding. She clambered inside with ill-concealed irritation.

The other woman went around to the driver's side quickly and got in. "Seat belts, please," she said briskly, putting her own on and pulling out without waiting for Maddy to do the same. The smaller woman quickly grabbed the strap and buckled herself in, almost shell-shocked by the sudden, disorienting turn the day had taken. It felt almost surreal, like she was the victim of a prank or a guest on some dumb reality show or something. Maddy was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed upper-middle class grad student from Iowa spending a week in London with her old college friends. She felt a little tinge of guilt for acknowledging her privilege, even in the privacy of her own head, but... things like this didn't happen to people like her.

They moved smoothly through city traffic, going down a maze of streets that Maddy didn't recognize before pulling into an underground ramp below a tall, featureless office building. She had no idea where she was--other people had done all the driving on this trip, and the few times she'd been behind the wheel Maddy had relied on GPS to navigate for her. It took her a terrifyingly brief amount of time to get completely and totally lost. "Um, w-will you be taking me back to the museum?" she asked, surprised at how tentative her own voice sounded. "Only I've got some friends who are expecting me, and, um--"

"Your friends might be the ones responsible," the agent said, pulling into a parking spot with a placard that said 'RESERVED' and turning off the engine. "Please, I'll explain everything in just a moment." She got out and went around, opening the door for Maddy while the blonde tried to parse exactly what that enigmatic, terrifying utterance meant. 'Responsible'? Responsible for what? For pranking her like this? Was this some kind of weird gag they thought up, hiring an actor to make Maddy think that they were secretly wanted criminals under investigation by Interpol? It didn't really seem like the kind of thing Jenna and Hailey would do. Then again, neither did actually being criminals under investigation by Interpol.

The agent took her to the elevator, and used a key card to activate the controls. She pressed a button for the twelfth floor, and maintained her stony silence as they gently ascended. Maddy didn't dare break it. Even though the other woman had been nothing but coolly polite, and even though she'd gone out of her way to let Maddy know that she personally hadn't done anything wrong, there was something about the sober, serious demeanor that nonetheless made Maddy feel like at any second she could find herself handcuffed and thrown into a holding cell. She couldn't stop herself from walking on eggshells around the stranger.

It wasn't until they went down a short hallway and into a small, cramped room dominated by a large screen on one wall and a plush, faux leather couch pressed up against the opposite side that the agent began to speak. "Please, have a seat," she said, locking the door behind her and slipping the key into the pocket of her pantsuit. "I'm sorry for the abrupt manner in which you were brought here, but it's distinctly possible that you were under observation and I wanted to make sure that anyone who might be watching you didn't get a chance to see where you were being led."

The agent took out a small remote control and pressed a button, and Maddy noticed a red light winking on in the upper corner of the room. She hadn't noticed the camera before, but it felt inescapably obvious to her now. "Could you please state your name for the official record, miss?" the agent asked, her position clearly chosen to avoid blocking the camera's line of sight.

Maddy looked down at the floor anxiously. "Maddy--um, uh, M-Madeline. Madeline Fulton. I, um... you, you said you'd tell me what this was about?" Even asking the question felt inexplicably risky, as though she expected at any moment for the agent's sober and serious demeanor to erupt into threatening violence. Maddy didn't have anything in her experience to compare this to, nothing that would tell her how to behave or what to expect. The only thing she had was TV shows and movies, and thinking about their overblown and dramatic examples only deepened Maddy's paranoia and fear.

"Of course," the agent replied with a single brisk nod. "Miss Fulton, we brought you in because a routine CCTV sweep flagged you as a potential victim of hypnotic infiltration. I know that sounds difficult to believe...." That was one hell of an understatement. 'Hypnotic infiltration'? What the hell did that even mean? Was this woman seriously trying to say that she thought Maddy had been hypnotized somehow? Like, pocket watch and piercing stare, 'look into my eyes, you are in my power' hypnotized? It would have been laughable under any other circumstances.

"...certain visual indicators of hypnotic infiltration." Maddy realized with a start that the agent was still talking, and she struggled to get her mind back on the conversation. "There's a lingering relaxation of the muscles around the eyes, for example, producing a distinct expression that computer analysis of the footage can pick out. A sort of 'hypnotized look', if you will. It's not conclusive, but when it passes a certain probability threshold, we need to bring you in for testing to ensure that your will hasn't been compromised."

Maddy stared at her, watching her own mouth open and close like a goldfish in the reflective surface of the sunglasses as she tried to find the words to express her absolute gobsmacked befuddlement. "...I don't remember being hypnotized," she said at last, blushing bright red at the petulant confusion she heard in her own tones. She couldn't believe how stupid she sounded.

The agent was polite enough not to comment directly, but her thin-lipped smile spoke volumes. "That only means that the hypnotist could have been expert enough to remove all traces of their infiltration from your conscious memory," she said, her voice remaining entirely smooth and calm and professional despite what Maddy felt certain was an absolute contempt for the airheaded American she was talking to. "Most people are genuinely unaware of the power a skilled mesmeric professional has to permanently alter behavior and core beliefs. Under the right circumstances, virtually anyone can be manipulated into a docile and suggestible state."

Maddy's heart caught in her throat. There was something so matter-of-fact and off-hand about the way the agent described it that Maddy couldn't imagine contradicting her; if this woman said it was possible to hypnotize and brainwash someone against their will and without their conscious recollection, Maddy didn't doubt that it was true. "Um, I, uh, h-how do we find out?" she asked nervously. "If, if I was hypnotized, I mean."

The woman from Interpol gestured again with her remote control, and the screen flickered into life. A series of fractal, kaleidoscopic patterns flowed endlessly down into the center, sparkling with brilliant color and captivating motion that instantly caught and held Maddy's attention. "Well, if you were genuinely hypnotized, there should be a certain amount of residual susceptibility that we can test through examination of a standard series of fascinators and inductions to determine how easily you go into a trance state. On a scale of ten to one, Maddy, how awake and aware do you feel right now?"

Maddy blinked heavily, suddenly petrified of her own stare. "I, um, uh, ten," she mumbled, not really sure how true it was but unwilling to admit even the slightest weakness for fear of being... being what? Arrested for hypnosis? Put into a deprogramming class? Turned into a sleeper agent for Interpol? She didn't understand the stakes here, Maddy realized, but the seriousness the other woman was treating the situation with implied real consequences if they found anything wrong. Best to just pretend that none of this was bothering her and hope she passed with flying colors before too long.

But the frown on the agent's face made Maddy worry that it wasn't going to be that easy. "I see," the dark-haired woman said, tapping the remote control again to make the colors on the screen speed up slightly. "And when you look deeper into the lights, does that bring that ten down to nine, down to eight, or do you come right back up to ten again for me?" Her voice softened, becoming more reassuring, and Maddy found herself almost pathetically grateful for it. With failure such a terrifying and enigmatic possibility, she was desperate to keep in the agent's good graces for as long as possible.

Which included telling the other woman what she wanted to hear. "Um, t-ten, still, I think?" Maddy replied, wishing she knew what that was. She didn't know what she was supposed to be experiencing if she was genuinely more susceptible to hypnosis--she'd never been hypnotized, or if she had been she didn't remember it, and she didn't know what kind of signs to look for. Maybe just watching the screen was a sign. Or maybe if she looked away, it meant that subconsciously she knew that the patterns could hypnotize her and she was afraid of it happening. "Maybe, um, maybe nine."

"Mhmm," the agent murmured, her voice giving no hint of the correct answer. "And when you hear yourself say nine, do you find yourself thinking of eight, or perhaps seven? How far down do those numbers go for you, Maddy, before you need to blink yourself back up to ten?" She kept playing with the remote control while she spoke, speeding up and slowing down the patterns, introducing new folds and reflections into the image on the screen. The whole time, she kept watching Maddy with that same mirrored, expressionless gaze.

"I, um... h-how far down do the numbers go?" Maddy asked, utterly bemused by the question. She hoped she didn't sound as stupid as she felt, but... but it was so confusingly worded. Of course hearing ten and then nine led her to think of eight, that was as normal as hearing A and B and proceeding to C. She'd been counting as long as she remembered, and it was instinctive to follow a sequence of numbers. That was the, the... pattern. Maddy blinked again, her eyelids seeming to close and open in slow motion.

"Yes, Maddy," the agent said, her frown conveying an infinite and yet wholly exhausted patience. "From seven down to six. From six down to five. From five down to four. All the way down, Maddy, down to....?" The pause stretched out for an awkward eternity, building the social pressure to speak until Maddy blurted out what she desperately hoped was the correct answer.

"Zero?" she asked, uptalk turning the answer into a question even as she said it. It was a habit she thought she'd conquered back in high school, a verbal tic that always made her sound weak and anxious and eager to please, and Maddy was astonished to discover just how easily she fell back into it under the mirrored scrutiny of the Interpol agent. She blinked rapidly, her eyes flicking back and forth from side to side as she tried to refocus her unexpectedly blurry vision.

The agent's brow furrowed. "But the scale was from ten down to one, Maddy. Ten...." and she jabbed the air with her index finger.  "Down to one," she added, drawing a vertical slash that tugged Maddy's attention away from the screen for just a moment before the fractal patterns pulled her gaze back into the endless flowing colors. "Why did you find yourself saying zero just now? Did you think I wanted you to count even deeper?" There was a hungry, predatory quality to her demeanor that unnerved Maddy, but the only way she could think of to make it go away was to make the other woman happy. She just needed to find out how to do that.

"I, um, I, I, um...." Maddy was finding it remarkably difficult to collect her scattered thoughts. She kept flashing back to her timid teenage years, always seeking approval and never certain of who she was. The eyeless stare, the severe authority of the woman in gray, all of it kicked the props out from under her and demolished years of confidence in a matter of instants. "It just seemed, uh, natural," she stammered at last. "Numbers go down to... to zero."

The agent's nod was like the tolling of a funeral bell. "It just felt natural to go down to zero," she repeated, as though she'd as good as elicited a confession from Maddy. "It just felt natural to watch the pretty lights on the screen and go down... down... down to zero. Tell me, Maddy, do you find your eyes getting tired right now? Do you feel the need to blink to keep them from getting heavy... and drowsy... and burning with the desire to slip shut?"

Maddy tried to follow the sudden conversational shift, but it seemed like every change of subject landed with a greater jolt and left more and more unanswered questions in its wake. "Um, n-no, I, I'm fine," she mumbled, trying desperately to fight the urge to blink that had developed almost instantly into the only thing she could think about. "My eyes aren't, um... aren't s-sleepy." She stifled a yawn, hoping against hope that the agent wouldn't confuse the ordinary everyday power of suggestion with the apparently irresistible force of hypnosis.

"Not even when you count down to zero? When I say ten, Maddy girl, and your mind inevitably follows that instinctive, automatic descent to nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero... you're sure you don't have to struggle to keep those heavy eyes open?" Maddy heard herself let out a tiny, whimpering sigh, but it seemed to come from a long way away. As though she was at the bottom of a deep, dark well, and the soft pathetic gasp came from the very top. Her eyelids burned with the desire to close, but she kept them locked on the patterns, determined not to show any weakness that might give the agent cause to suspect her of falling victim to hypnotic infiltration.

"I think you might be trying to hide something from me, Maddy," the agent purred soothingly, sitting down on the couch and taking Maddy's limp hand in her own. "I think there's something you want to tell me right now, a very real truth that you're just a little bit frightened to admit. But I'm only here to help you, Maddy. I'm here to help you realize what's happened to you, help you understand how weak and suggestible you are so that we can uncover all the things you've been brainwashed to believe." The other woman's hand stroked Maddy's wrist all the way up to the elbow, her touch relaxing Maddy further and further until her eyes widened into helpless fascination with the patterns on the screen.

"I can see it in your eyes, Maddy," the agent said gently. "You look hypnotized right now. And if you look hypnotized... and you feel hypnotized... and you sound hypnotized....?" She paused again. Maddy no longer had the will to remain silent in the face of that patient, unbending expectation to speak.

"...I am hypnotized," she droned out, the sleepy monotone removing all doubt from her befuddled mind. She slumped back onto the couch, her eyelids finally sinking shut as the patterns swallowed up her thoughts and left her blank and passive and ready to listen to the other woman's soothing voice. Maddy felt fabric sliding against her skin, the t-shirt she wore coming up and over her head as the agent began to undress her. But she was too deep to question it anymore. She merely listened, her head moving in nod after slow, drowsy nod as she accepted the truth of her hypnotic infiltration at last.

THE END