"You're not going to beat us, Amia," Lori said. Her newfound sense of hope gave her the strength to pull her gaze off of her roommate and look her adversary dead in her eyes.
"Oh?" Amia replied nonchalantly. She seemed entirely unconcerned. "And why's that?"
"Because I'm not the one who wants to be a drone." Lori smiled. "You are."
"What?" Amia laughed derisively, but Lori thought she could detect a slightly nervous edge to Amia's laughter. "That's ridiculous."
"Is it?" Lori drew herself up to her full height, her confidence slowly rising. "You sure seem to know something about how good it feels to be a drone, Amia. It's a little suspicious."
"That's..." Amia looked like she'd momentarily short-circuited. It was obvious Lori's questioning had taken her completely off-guard. "It's programmed to feel good, duh! I made Elbourne make it that way. That's how I know."
"No. No, that's not it." Lori shook her head. It was dawning on her more and more with each passing moment, the pieces all coming together in her head. The genuine shock in Amia's eyes was all the confirmation she needed. "You didn't just know it felt good. You were waxing lyrical about it. Got any fantasies you want to share?"
"No." Amia glared viciously at Lori, her bloodshot eyes full of rage. "None of this matters! This doesn't change anything. You're mine! You're both craving it. You both need it. You both-"
"I think it does matter." Lori's newfound clarity gave her the strength to interrupt Amia, easily cutting through the mind-controller's ranting. She could tell that Harper was now a little more lucid, Lori's words giving her roommate something to hold on to. Lori didn't want to risk Harper falling back under Amia's spell. "C'mon, Amia. Are you really trying to tell me you haven't fantasized about it? What was it you were just saying... 'all it takes is one moment of submission'. Have you felt that moment? Are you craving it?"
"Shut up!" Amia shrieked.
"You can't tell me you haven't thought about it," Lori pressed. "Not after the way you were talking about it. You've thought about it a lot. Haven't you?"
"It's not... it's..." Amia suddenly looked mortified, ashamed that anything but a hard denial had passed her lips. Lori, conversely, felt energized. Seeing Amia crack right before her eyes was filling her with giddy euphoria. Far from feeling weak and disoriented, as she had done mere minutes before, she was feeling as strong as she ever had. She wondered if the adrenaline rush that was now hitting her was the same feeling that Amia, and even Harper, had felt before. Clearly, they had let it go to their heads, albeit to different extents. Lori needed to avoid making that same mistake. She didn't feel too worried, though. She was in control.
"It's what, Amia?" Lori demanded confidently. "We both know what it is. So why don't you just admit it? What are you afraid of?"
Amia's unnerved expression twisted into a nasty grimace. "You better shut your mouth, before I decide to set my drones on you, risky or not."
A little of Lori's confidence ebbed away as she surveyed the room around her, and once again became conscious of the four brainwashed, latex-clad drones that were still standing at attention, ready to spring on her the moment they received the command. She needed to remember that she was still in danger, Lori thought to herself, or else overconfidence was sure to be her undoing.
"I'm just saying," Lori continued, adopting a slightly gentler tone. "Why not? It'll be pleasurable, and you won't have a care in the world. You said so yourself."
"What is this?" Amia snarled, unwilling to be drawn in. "You're playing some kind of trick, aren't you?"
Lori spread her arms wide, the picture of openness. "I'm just asking questions."
Amia paused, eyeing Lori suspiciously as she considered her next words. Lori had to suppress a smile. It was transparently obvious what Amia was thinking. She was weighing whether or not she had something to prove, and whether refusing to play along would show weakness. If she was smart, she would ignore Lori's taunts, of course. But Lori had a feeling Amia wouldn't be able to resist.
"I'm not like you," Amia snarled, after a moment's thought. "I'm in control. I've always been in control. I've been toying with you for weeks, and you didn't even know it. In fact, you enjoyed every single second of it. That's what you are. You're weak. Submissive. I'm dominant. Powerful. I take pleasure in doing whatever I want with people like you. I'm in control."
Lori shivered. Despite everything, she was struggling to completely shrug off the kind of dominance Amia was projecting. Lori knew all too well how pleasurable it was to slip into submission. She'd experienced it far too much to ever forget. Even now, it would have been a lie to pretend to herself that she didn't still feel that temptation. It would be so easy. But she had to keep fighting. It wasn't about her or her pleasure anymore. It was about saving Harper and her friends.
"But," Lori countered, placing a fingertip on her chin and affecting a mocking, confused look. "You said yourself that dominance and submission are just two sides of the same coin. Those are your words, Amia. Not mine. Yours. Whatever pleasure you get from being in control, you can get just as much pleasure submitting. Right? Isn't that what you were saying to Harper?"
"That... that wasn't about me!" Amia cried, frustrated.
"How do you know?" Lori shot back. "Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever tried it? You must have been tempted, right? Maybe just once? I'm sure that at least one time, when you had Elbourne here, or someone else, and you had them starting at one of those spirals, you must have been tempted to look too. Who wouldn't be? You must have wondered how it would feel. How good it would feel. Who wouldn't? It was just curiosity, of course. At least at first. But then, it became something more than that, right?" Amia looked almost spellbound as Lori wove her tale. "You started fantasizing about it. One of those secret, shameful fantasies. It would be thrilling, wouldn't it? To lose it all. To experience everything being so completely turned on its head. You, the submissive drone. Someone else, the dominant administrator. It was exciting. Maybe it even went beyond fantasies. Maybe, just once, you did look. Maybe that's why you know how good it feels to submit. Maybe that's all you can think about."
The look on Amia's face was all Lori needed to be sure she'd hit the mark. Her expression was one of utter shock, but it was tinged with something else too. Amia's cheeks had become flushed, her brow was slick with sweat, and she was breathing unusually hard. She was obviously aroused. Ashamed, yes, but aroused too. Now, Lori couldn't suppress a grin. She'd known she was on the right track.
"I... I..." Amia stammered. "I-I never did that."
Lori picked up on her inflection right away. "Right. You never looked. But you wanted to. You fantasized about it."
Amia looked like she was about to explode, although Lori wasn't sure if it was anger, shame or arousal that most showed through in her face. She was so flustered she forgot to deny what Lori was suggesting. "T-that doesn't mean anything!"
"I think it does," Lori declared, in a sing-song voice. "It means I'm right - about everything. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You know exactly the kind of pleasure I'm talking about. The pleasure of submission. You're thinking about it right now, aren't you? You want it. You're craving it."
"Shut up!" Amia repeated, her voice weaker and less assured than ever. "That's not me! That's... that's you! You're twisting everything around, you bitch!"
"Oh yeah?" Lori stared Amia dead in her eyes, daring her. "Prove it."
Heaving and breathing hard, Amia just stared back for several long seconds, seemingly dumbfounded. Lori waited, motionless. She didn't want to give Amia too much time to gather her thoughts, but she didn't want to press her so hard she snapped either. She needed to walk a fine line. Hopefully, Amia would walk right into the trap she was setting. Her grin faded as the silence wore on, but a thin smile returned to her face once Amia drew herself up, ran a hand through her now-messy hair to re-arrange it slightly, and stepped forwards confrontationally.
"You're going to submit to me," Amia declared, her furious eyes boring holes in Lori's head. "Right now. Because you are weak. Because you've already submitted. Dozens, maybe hundreds of times. You think you're free? You're just a broken drone. You know it's all still in your head. All that programming and brainwashing. You know you'll cave once I make you submit. And you know you'll love it."
"Yeah," Lori moaned. She swayed on her feet as the impact of Amia's words hit her. She didn't try to fight it. It was so vivid, the impression of pleasure most of all. She knew how good it would feel to break. "It's incredible. There's nothing like it. It feels so good."