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

Chapter 419: Too Good to be True

Toni let her mind empty, focusing entirely on the road ahead of her. She wasn't going particularly fast, but these moments were the ones that really made her feel alive. More than the sense of community, more than the deep bonds of trust with her friends, more than good-natured racing or riding in a group, this was what being a biker really meant to her. The seconds stretching to eternity and the moments where there was nothing in the universe but her and the horizon ahead. The Kawasaki moved like it was a part of her, so close that she didn't need to think of it like a separate being, and the road was her entire world, every sense focused on the sense of movement.

And then she was slowing down, reality fading back into existence around her as she took a lazy corner, drifting back into a world that contained other drivers, storefronts, and junctions. Less than a minute later, she was making her choice which way to turn. Come off at Duzcheburg, or blaze straight along the narrow back roads to Schwingford. But the decision was made for her as she drifted along Graveller Road and saw a brightly lit window on Raikou Crescent. There were two people getting excited inside the room, although at this distance it was hard to identify them. Celebrating or arguing, she had no idea. But the slightest hint of news about what had happened to Adi set Toni down the side streets to park her bike up outside that lighted window. And when she heard Britney and Nyx's voices inside, she knew that it would be fine to let herself inside.

She found them in the lounge, with a gentle tap on the door.

"What's up?" she asked, and their faces didn't tell her if the news was going to be good or bad.

"Adi called," Nyx was the first to answer, but her expression didn't spark any kind of joy. "She's some kind of confused. She's scared of what Dean's doing, he's talking about some kind of training, and he's talking to other people about it too. She doesn't know what's happening, or even what country she's in. But somehow she trusts him, enough that she's reluctant to answer our questions. I think he's got to her somehow."

"Stockholm Syndrome, they call it. I think he's counting on that. And with hypnosis it could be so much worse. You can mess with someone's sense of reality. When we made him a babysitter, we told her to trust him implicitly. Like she can't believe he'd do anything wrong. So even when she knows she's a prisoner, and she's scared he'll push her even further into babyhood... she's stuck doing what he told her."

"That sucks. But at least she's safe. He can't keep her off the grid forever, right? Did you get any clues at all?"

"She said she's in a house. I thought some kind of holiday cottage, but it doesn't happen. Short term rentals, up to three weeks, are technically a hotel and have to be registered. You need to have your arrival and departure dates cleanly match your plane tickets, or you'd get stopped at passport control. And over three weeks, you need a residency permit or special arrangement. You couldn't rent a place like that without making at least the first steps on a citizenship application. Which, I don't know, but I doubt is something Dean is realistically considering."

"There must be another answer. Staying with a friend? And do they actually check all these things, or is it regulations that aren't enforced?"

"I don't know. But anyway, Adi hung up in the middle of the call. I think maybe Dean was back. We have to find an answer, but right now I think the clues we've got just aren't enough."

* * *

Reggie leaned into the back of the car and fastened Lily and Vicky's seat belts for them. Lily giggled a little. She knew she was still an adult, and she could do it all by herself. But it was comforting to have an adult to look out for her. Once she was properly seated, Reggie took the whiteboard out of her hands and went to suspend it in the network of criss-cross elastic that formed storage space on the back of the front seat. But then he hesitates, meeting Vicky's eyes. She seemed to be looking down at reggie, but didn't say any words. When he turned to Lily, she knew she was being some kind of tiebreaker for an unspoken debate. She nodded eagerly, excited to see what was on Reggie's mind even if she had no idea what it might be.

He unclipped the green marker from the whiteboard, and modified a few of the words. Then he snapped a couple of pieces of elastic over the corners, suspending the board on full display in front of her. Lily tried to read the words, to find out what they had in store for her next. But she couldn't focus, and the letters didn't seem to be familiar. They were little collections of lines and boxes, but she couldn't remember which letters might mean what.

"Naughty Daddy!" Vicky erupted in a tide of giggles, so Lily had to think she could read it. Therefore, her adult brain reasoned, the words were an instruction that she wouldn't be able to read. Which didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, because then there would be no secret to uncover. Unless the words said more than one thing. She should be able to work that out, she was sure. Maybe she could count how many words there should have been, but she couldn't remember how many of those weird squiggles made a word even, so she was pretty much stuck. Unless, of course, she could just ask Vicky.

"Aaah de baaaba gooomaa?" she asked, turning to the other regressed child. But Vicky only answered with it a tidal wave of giggles, and after a few seconds Lily could see exactly why. She tried to stare at her own lips, but that obviously wasn't happening. She tried to ask again, and came up with "Baaaa! Bababababaaaaa!", which wasn't much of an improvement on last time. So she looked across at Vicky, who was still giggling as Reggie fastened up her seat belt, and seemed to be enjoying all the attention. All Lily could do was pout, which was enough to get more friendly chuckles from the other two. But they weren't laughing at her, that seemed to be the important thing. And she knew that they would only push this as long as she was happy on some level.

It wasn't a long drive back to her new family's home. But Lily couldn't go even a few minutes without seeing something interesting outside the windows, or realising how silly Vicky sounded when she got the words wrong or got stuck in a childish lisp with the nursery songs she was singing. And every time something came to mind, she had to try to talk, only for more baby babble to spill from her lips. She felt so helpless, so humiliated, so cared for. And so she didn't even try to reach forward and wipe the whiteboard clean. She could accept that sometimes Daddy could understand what she wanted better than she knew herself.