Returning home on the flight to Las Vegas the following evening, Corey felt a bit out of place leaning back comfortably in his first-class seat. He had spent such a rich time in a beautiful city known for its romantic sights. There was a lifestyle there, people only dream about. Next to him, he could see Elora was also coming back to reality. The fact that he would be flying out to Baltimore in the morning also seemed foreign to him, and knowledge of that seemed to be a damper on Elora's moods as well. She made no effort to conceal her anxiety about him going to the East on Police business, alone.

"And what if you do locate this . . . Marlow girl over there, Corey? Will you have the assistance you need to get her out?"

"Look, a lot of what I'll be doing is just cracking the mystery of Henley's association with Hopkins. This research project she was working on."

"Well that sounds a little safer," she said, observably relieved.

"What I got from the Psych Department chair there by phone was just diversion. Some kind of smoke screen. I'm willing to bet wherever this girl is being held, and by whom, it definitely keys into information that department head failed to give me. And now that our victim is possibly alive, it's even more critical that I jump on whatever I can learn."

"OK. But still, lover, you should be going to Maryland with FBI support. I mean this is a kidnapping case, right? Isn't that their jurisdiction."

"Yup. And let's not forget crossing state lines in the process of a felony. That puts them into it fully as well."

"So what's the problem?"

"What you don't know about this very strange case, Miss Sleuth, is just how standoffish the Feds are to me and our department on this. They've totally iced Mattingly and I from key facts about what was discovered in the girl's laptop. They've been dissing us about that since the beginning."

"Seriously? Why, do you suppose?"

"It all began when we asked for that basic intel, the contents of her computer. The nature of her research and the exact project she was working with, and with whom. They refused."

"Wow. Something pretty sensitive, no doubt."

"Exactly. And it all got even stranger after that. Total silence. Just some menial request for us to support them by interviewing her online contacts in Vegas. Something I believe they already did, though that's still not corroborated by all of them."

"So what do you make of that, Corey?"

The plane was already in its descent, getting ready to land in fifteen minutes.

"From interviewing witnesses unknown to the Feds, I got more out of them than they thought we would." He paused to fasten his seatbelt.

Leora did the same. "Like what?"

"This whole thing about the young women being in some secret society opened my mind to a possible missing piece to the case. Something the Feds do know, but are still not willing to openly discuss with us."

"What sort of a society?"

"A Lesbian and Bi group. Some online organization with a connection to . . . get this, Greek mythology."

"Wow. That's pretty fascinating."

"They call themselves New Daughters of . . . Sap . . .Saff"

"Sappho?"

"Right . . . How'd you know that?"

"Just one more little-known fact about me, Lover . . ."

"So you're bisexual? . . .gay?"

"No." She laughed. "But I'm a huge fan of mythology. Greek myths are another of my passions."

"Seriously, Elora . . . How did you know that name?"

"It's just logical. I was always fascinated with the Greek myths. Their gods and goddesses. . . since junior high, I guess."

"OK, but . . ."

"Every mythology fan worth their spots knows lesbians in ancient times were associated with the island of Lesbos. And the famous female poet of the island, Sappho. New Daughters of Sappho says it all . . . what this group is about . . . Young gay girls, obviously."

"Wow. You amaze me."

"Only amaze?"

"OK. So here's another challenge for you . . ."

"Oh goodie . . . mythology again?"

"Actually, yeah. So, who was the god of sleep . . . and dreams in Greek Mythology?"

"Wait. Don't tell me . . . yeah, that would be . . . Morpheus."

"Jesus!"

"No, not Jesus. Morpheus!" Again laughter.

"How do you remember these things?"

"A little Greek language helps. I'm a nurse, remember? Medical terms have Greek roots. Morphene? The drug to put you to sleep? . . . Comes from Morpheus . . . god of sleep."

"Alright. Impressed again. Look, you told me before. The military works on special programs with psychology. . ."

"They do. PSYOPs. Psychological operations."

"And how do you know about that?"

"Well that gets a little personal, but since I presently am in love with you, I'll tell you."

Corey just looked into her eyes as the plane was landing.

"Well now, you don' have to tell me if . . . "

"No. It's fine. For a while I was dating this guy who was in the Army. An officer who worked with black budget stuff."

"With what?"

"You know. Those creepy things the military does we'll never know about or even how much they cost the American public?"

"OK. Sounds perfectly disgusting."

"Actually, it didn't take me long to figure out it was. And he was."

"Oh."

"No. We didn't last long. But I did get some insight into a whole world most of us have no idea exists."

"Alright, now I'm interested."

The plane was taxiing toward the Vegas terminal.

"Well, if it gives you an idea, last year the government couldn't account for seventeen billion dollars the military spent . . . That's billions with a B."

"That's incredible. Black budget, huh?"

"Yeah. We'll never know for what."

"Any ideas?"

"Well, as much as Tim would tell me . . . He's the guy that . . ."

"You were dating . . . please skip the details."

"Right. Well, the way he explained PSYOPs, the military just takes the latest cutting-edge knowledge of brain research . . . psychology, and then just weaponizes it. Uses it for strategic stuff. Offensively and defensively. Mind control. Persuasion. Propaganda. All of that."

"Wow."

"To influence or degrade an enemy, he explained it. But he wouldn't say more."

"Amazing. I suppose he'd have to kill you if he did."

"Corey!"

"Well, this does sound like there could be a connection to something 'top secret' as one of the witnesses told me Henley was working on. Whatever that could mean."

"Yeah. Wow. Really interesting."

"I mean if Hopkins is leading the way in brain science, why wouldn't the military be interested in what they're doing?"

"Exactly. But why her? What could she . . . a lesbian beauty queen, have to do with them?"

"Or someone working with them at Hopkins?"

"That could be the million-dollar question. Or should we say billion?"

"Elora, maybe the department should be sending you to Baltimore for this investigation."

She laughed. "I told you, Lover, I don't do the dangerous stuff. But I am curious about these things. This case has become pretty intriguing to me."

"Well, angel, that makes two of us."

* * *

(A locked cabin on the superyacht Morpheus, Baltimore Harbor)

Henley once again tied to free her arms and hands from the padded adjustable bed which had been folded up to a chair-like position. She sat now motionless in front of a large screen TV monitor, wheeled over in front of her. Outside the locked and darkened cabin, she could hear another ship passing by in the distance, sounding its deep horn.

She had just been administered a drug, once again into her arm, and she felt the heavy substance beginning to bring on a familiar sleepy reaction to it. As always during these sessions, which had now lasted a week and a half, Henley knew she would soon be asleep and experiencing powerful and vivid dreams, an effect which her second injection would bring on. She also knew the young man soon to be in attendance next to her would be watching those images on the screen and engaged in an attempted telepathic transfer of them to her as she slept. It was all a part of the research she had once been a part of but now, ironically and tragically, a victim of.

As Henley's thoughts became less active during what is known as the alpha state, she knew herself to be more vulnerable to a psychological pathways in sleep to influence her thoughts and feelings. As before, and for many days repeated, she was forced during the procedure to watch on the screen with her attendant graphically sexual videos with her head strapped forward in the upright bed-chair. She was held motionless by Velcro straps and subjected to small adhesives placed on her eyelids so she could not close her eyes to block the lurid scenes she was forcibly obliged to watch on the screen.

The second injection was soon given her by a white-coated, heavy-set man, nearly bald and appearing always cold and dispassionate. He was somewhere in his late fifties or early sixties with the detached attitude of a clinical physician. She had heard him speak infrequently to the younger male attendant who assisted in securing her, with a distinctive foreign accent.

The effects of this second injection made Henley feel a sudden rush of energy in tandem to her sleepiness. And with this stimulant came the distinctive sensation of intense sexual arousal. Unavoidably, her breasts became sensitive and her vaginal area damp and soon moist, accompanied by characteristic female arousal indicated by pulsations of her clitoral area.

Waiting for the combined effects of these two injections, affecting her body and sexual l libido, the white-coated man stepped up and took Henley's wrist to monitor her pulse. Once satisfied her breathing and heartbeat was elevated, he produced from his lab coat the video control device for the TV monitor and initiated the graphic video clip she had to watch in close proximity. The male next to her would watch it also for the purposes of intensifying its telepathic messaging to her while she slept and eventually dreamed.

On screen in these videos would be a handsome hetero couple, male and female, and though different individuals appeared during each of these video-sleep sessions, the couple was always in their early to mid-twenties, as Henley herself. The young man and woman were always presented in very high resolution and the editing included close-ups of their attractive faces, their fit, arousing bodies, and what appeared to be an authentic attraction to each other. Henley was forced to remain stationary in the upright seated position to watch as the videos began in a romantic atmosphere. They would appear on a seclude beach, in a forest, or a posh, candle-lit bedroom. It began with smiles and kisses, antics of affection which soon led to caresses, and their excited, mutual undressing each other.

In each of these programmed video sessions the heterosexual couple would progress from a romantic interlude, to full-on sexual involvement, stimulating each other with their hands and mouths as a prelude to actual sexual intercourse. The scenes were graphic, with close-ups of their engaged naked genitals and showing the two in various sexual positions. These videos each lasted from ten to twenty minutes, complete with the couple's arousing sounds of breathing, vocalizations, and their rhythmic bodies slapping together when approaching and completing orgasms.

As the second injection had the intended effect of enhancing the video for sexual stimulation, the earlier had a lasting and more powerful effect of rendering Henley to eventual sleep and consequently a prolonged alpha state to vividly create her dreams, purposely focused on the sexual activities she had just witnessed. This was orchestrated in conjunction with the young male attendant trained to project this own amplified imagery of the scenes into Henley's mind. It was all, except for the forced sexual emphasis of the procedure—grossly unethical, exactly what the research at Johns Hopkins University was studying and perfecting. A concept and lab design Henley herself had been innocently involved with.

While in captivity on the yacht in Baltimore Harbor, Henley had undergone this procedure daily since her abduction. During each of these sessions, her sleep was deep and intended to be dream-filled. These forced reveries, however, were in a constant conflict with what Henley's own sexual conditioning and personal free choice was fighting to maintain—a romantic and sexual interest solely in females. The barbaric treatments she was having to endure were designed to change her personal sexual choice to a heterosexual preference. And she had been fighting this heterosexual indoctrination day by day.

It was on this tenth or eleventh session that her dream began to show her reluctantly beginning to succumb to the intended influence of the psychological persuasion. On this day, as Henley drifted off to sleep, and as her straps were removed, her chair positioned back into a bed, her dream began as it often did, back in Arizona:

Running toward the secluded little beach by the river, Henley could see the sky darkening. There was an ominous wind fluttering the leaves of the aspen trees into a blur of silver and green. She carried her Native American blanket to lay upon when she reached hers and Jaelyn's their meeting spot. Finding the favorite place where the two had met on so many occasions—to make love and sleep in the shade, she found herself strangely alone.

Calling out to Jaelyn, Henley began to worry something had gone wrong. Where could her partner have gone instead, she wondered? She began to follow the river farther downstream. It was to a place unfamiliar, where she began to hear the sound of a familiar voice. It was light and happy. Comfortingly that of Jaelyn's. She crept closer, hearing it louder, but now also with someone else's voice. A deeper, male's voice.

Henley crouched behind a bush and peered over it to see. There was Jaelyn, seated naked on a solid blue blanket with a young man, also naked. He had a tan body and handsome face. The shock of seeing her lover there, seated nude with a naked male caused her to step back. As the couple moved closer together, Henley began to run back through the trees. She returned breathlessly along the river to their original meeting place in tears.

Looking out to the river she became shocked again. Rising out of the water was the same young man she had just seen. He was tall, handsome, and naked. He walked up to her calmly, unembarrassed by his nakedness.

"There you are," he said, smiling with outreached arms . . .

* * * ­