Chapter 3
Natasha was in the theater about to enter the hypnotist's office, when suddenly she saw Laura and Claire Walker leaving the office, sleepwalking with their arms outstretched and their faces expressionless. They walked slowly.
Natasha approached them and waved her hand in front of their eyes. The two girls did not react, they simply continued to sleepwalk until they left the theater. Natasha had a difficult decision: either take the watch and stop the hypnotist; or prevent the two girls from committing a robbery. In the end she decided to do the latter.
Natasha follows the two hypnotized girls down the street. The two sisters arrive at their father's offices. Natasha watches in amazement as the two girls begin to athletically climb the building without effort. Natasha enters the building and sees how the two girls manage to bypass the security measures until they reach the laboratories. Natasha knew that important pieces of technology were made there and that the hypnotist had probably ordered them to steal them. Natasha couldn't allow this.
Luckily for her they were just two girls with no combat experience so she quickly knocked them down and then tied their hands. The girls didn't react. They were still hypnotized. Natasha took them out of the building and took them to a hotel where she was hiding. Once they were in the room, Natasha untied them. Laura and Claire simply stood up and extended their arms. Now Natasha had to find a way to dehypnotize them or maybe take control of them to prevent them from obeying the hypnotist.
Natasha then tried to dephynotize them by seeing if they remembered anything. "Do you know who took you to the stage?" she asked after a moment.
Laura and Claire's eyes looked like they were trying to remember but then they shook their heads. "We-we can't remember anything." Laura replies sleepily. "We only remember one thing." Claire says slowly as her eyes flutter open. "The pocket watch." Then Laura and Claire looked like something forced them to close their eyes again and they went back into the trance.
Natasha's eyes then widened in realization as she remembered the man whispering something to the girls on the stage.
She then came to the conclusion that every time the man said that sentence, the girls would be locked into the mind-trance and they could only break out for a few minutes before being forced go back into their mind-controlled state.
Natasha quickly thought of a way to try to get information out of the girls.
Then she came up with an idea. She had made recordings of the hypnosis show with a hidden microphone. All she had to do was put the recordings on her laptop and with a program she used at SHIELD, record her own voice and alter it so that it sounded like the hypnotist's.
In this way, Natasha managed to record a phrase with her voice. She knew that the hypnotist used a very powerful device so it was difficult to break the trance, but she could trick the hypnotized girls into believing that she was the hypnotist.
So on Natasha's computer this phrase sounded in the hypnotist's voice: "Laura, Claire, observe the red-haired woman in front of you. You must obey her as if she were me. You must obey all her orders."
The girls then turned to Nastasha even though their eyes were closed. Then to Natasha's relief, it worked.
The girls blinked once, then their eyes returned back to their hazy trance.
"We are ready to obey your commands." Laura says in her tranced voice.
Now Natasha could finish her mission quicker with Laura and Claire's help. "You will enter the office and take the pocket watch on the desk."
Laura and Claire nodded slowly as they received their new commands, then they silently moved out of the hotel room and down the hall, not making any sounds as they went on their mission.
Natasha was then wondering if she should follow Laura and Claire to see if they would succeed or wait for them in her room.