✅🎊✂️ Hypnosis Won't Take Me There!! [alternative cut]

[Flashback Chapter 416: Last Resort]

Britney was pacing quickly down the street, not thinking about her destination. It didn't surprise her when she reached the Spenser house, though she wasn't consciously aware of any decision to stop there. It was just a usual place to go, checking up on Nyx and Garfield. Possibly Toni too, although none of her bikes was visible by the step today.

She let herself in. After the mysterious call from Kolechia, Nyx had given her a copy of the house keys, to increase the odds of there being someone in the house in case another reverse-billed call came through.

Nyx was in the lounge, and her excitement was tangible. There was tension in the air, and she hello the phone to her ear. Britney stepped forward immediately, trying to convey with a gesture the question if it was Adi on the other end. The answer she got was beckoning, and a quickly whispered explanation. It was Adi, but she seemed upset and wasn't giving the answers that they needed. She couldn't even confirm if it was Kolechia or possibly Latvia where she was being held.

"If it's Kolechia, she has to be in a small family-run hotel," Britney pointed out. "And there's less than a hundred of those. So we're already close to an answer."

"–baby for good," she could just about hear Adi's scared voice from the other end of the phone as Nyx held it away from her own ear and the two women put their heads together. "–read the names on the signposts even after a week. I was terrified, but–"

"Ask her if the letters were Cyrillic," Britney hissed. "Or Russian, if she doesn't know the –"

"Adi, do you think those signs were in Cyrillic?" Nyx cut her off to ask the question, cutting it down to as few words as she could. "Like Russian letters, where some of them are backwards?" Britney didn't catch the answer, but she saw a nod.

"Great. It's Kolechia for sure, and now we got a lot less hotels to–"

"What's the name of the hotel?" Nyx was finally in her element, firm and decisive. "I know it must be a non-chain one, so we don't need a description or anything. We need a name."

Britney stood back and listened to one side of the conversation, sacrificing direct involvement in favour of making sure that Nyx could hear every syllable clearly. If there was anything she could add, she knew that Adi's Mom would ask the most sensible questions despite her own anxiety and the little girl's obvious fear. In the few snatches of words Britney did overhear, she could be sure that Dean was making Adi younger than ever

"She's too nervous," Nyx whispered after several repetitions of the same basic question. "Says there isn't one."

"She didn't see the name?"

"No, there isn't a name. I think... after what we did, turning her into a baby when she didn't ask for it, she can't properly trust us anymore. And he's been conditioning her somehow, taking her down to baby and back again to make her trust him more. She said training. We need to get–"

"We might have to use the trigger," Britney answered quickly. "I don't want to, but we can't let him keep her there against her will. We can get her back here, and then start to tone it down. Try to get her back in line with this automatic email, whenever it arrives. Or if we haven't got it, then we just dial the baby suggestions back until she asks for something. But for now..."

"I'm scared," Nyx whispered, before turning her attention back to her daughter on the other end of the line.

Britney held out her hand for the phone when it became clear that Nyx was getting emotional. She'd always been so in control, no matter what the kids got up to. But it seemed that saying a trigger phrase now she knew it could make Adi uncomfortable was beyond her limits. Not to mention that Britney had thought of a whole new tack they could take. She pressed a button on the answering machine, hoping she'd understood the instructions correctly.

"Listen, Adi. Can you hear me? Can you just tell us what he did to you? If you can tell us, we have a recording for the police..." but as hard as she tried, she couldn't convince Adi that it was safe to tell the truth. Either she was as terrified of her friends as of the suddenly predatory babysitter, or Dean had already started training her to the point that she believed whatever he said. Either way, there was no way they would get Adi to say anything useful. But it was a good bet that the hypnotic trigger was still in her head, so they could force compliance if it was the only way forward.

She took a deep breath, and said the words: "Calm down Adelaide. If you were a baby you'd just answer our questions without worrying about what Dean has done to you. Because you can trust us to find you. Now, you're in a hotel. Have you seen the name, or any kind of logo?" Britney just hoped that would be enough to convince the kidnapped baby to give them the information they needed.

"It's not a hotel," the answer was still the same, so maybe the trigger hasn't even worked. Britney cursed inwardly. "It's just –" and then there was a click, and the line went dead. Britney was so disappointed that it was an effort not to throw the phone handset to the floor. She didn't move, but Nyx must have seen the tension.

"No luck?" she asked in a shaking voice that spoke of barely-held-back tears.

"Hung up. But she said it's not a hotel. Where else could they be?"

"Caravan rental?" Nyx guessed, "Do they follow the same rules as hotels? Or camping? We never even thought about that."

"I'll check, but I think I already dismissed it." Britney put the phone back down again, and tried to keep calm. They had some kind of answer now, she told herself. And if Adi called back they would have the right questions. But for now, all that lay ahead was another evening of research. "I'll check it out, anyway. Maybe next time we'll be able to find her."