Alphas #1: It Starts With a Pledge (Redux)
We agree to meet outside Romero. There's this little hipster café in Anabasis called The Cat's Cradle. The furniture inside is fashionably old, mismatching, thrift chic. The drinks are named after authors. An orange tabby weaves between my legs as I order some foamy iced latte called "The Highsmith." I collect my drink and follow a dim, narrow corridor past the counter to the back exit of the café. The door is propped open, I step through and I’m greeted by blinding sunlight.
Corbin sits alone on the back patio sipping her coffee. It's as quiet a venue as we had hoped it would be. Every place on this block is a best kept secret, perfect for secret meetings.
Corbin is a late addition. I’m the one who screens all the blog's emails, which means managing all the correspondence with our readers and potential tipsters. My plan was to meet with Emily first, then pitch the story to Corbin if I felt it was worth a follow-up. But Corbin’s been reading the tip email recently, too. Sometimes I think she’s uneasy about me leading these investigations. She said she wanted a partner, but she treats me like a research assistant.
Corbin looks up from her laptop screen and sees me in my nondescript baseball cap and chunky sunglasses. All the worry in her eyes snaps away with her laughter.
“What?” I ask, pulling out the metal chair on the opposite side of the table.
She reaches across to snatch the hat from my head. “You look conspicuous as hell.”
“It’s a clandestine meeting,” I say.
She gestures down her body. Corbin doesn’t look like she’s meeting an informant at all. No hat or sunglasses to obscure her features.
“The goal is to disappear,” Corbin explains. “You don’t want to look like someone who wants to disappear.”
Noted, but it’s a little funny for Corbin to lecture me about conspicuousness with her tits spilling out of her tank top.
She changes the subject. “How many people did you count in the coffee shop?”
“Three,” I reply.
“Who were they and what were they doing?”
“There was the barista,” I recall, counting them off my fingers. “She was working. The old man on his laptop near the front window, probably here for the wifi, and the girl in the game room with a book.”
“What was she reading?”
“I don’t remember.”
Corbin whispers “The Secret History” into her cup. “Exits?”
She knows it’s a dumb question, so I turn my head in the direction of the waist-high fencing that encloses the patio. Sorry, Corbin. Dumb questions deserve dumb answers.
“Piper?”
We both turn to meet the small voice near the cafe exit. Emily stands in the doorway. She’s short, but with a strong, athletic frame. She grips her backpack straps nervously. I notice that her right hand is encased in a purple cast. Her big, brown eyes, like Disney eyes, flash a look that’s both anxious and hopeful. Her voice is soft, too soft for Romero.
Emily’s email sounded far-fetched to me, but those are often Corbin’s favorite kind of leads. Corbin has a look when a case catches her interest, a little glimmer in her eyes. The lecherous TA who liked peeking through coeds’ dorm windows, the student body president who broke campaign rules to get elected, the professor who traded sexual favors for grades.
The look that Corbin gave me when she read Emily’s email was different. It was something wilder.
Corbin gestures for Emily to take the seat between us.
Emily hesitates before following. She says to me, “I thought we were meeting alone.”
“Corbin Arroyo,” Corbin extends her hand to Emily. “I write the stories.”
“I know,” Emily laughs nervously, taking Corbin’s hand. “You’re a campus celebrity.”
“Hardly,” Corbin brushes a strand of dark hair behind her ear.
I say, “Fame’s not really our goal.”
“Of course not,” Emily replies. Her grip loosens on the straps and she slides into the seat between us.
“It’s more of a hazard,” Corbin clarifies. “I do my best work anonymously, which is why Piper came on to help.”
If there was ever a nice way to call a girl unrecognizable.
“But you wanted to meet me?” Emily asks. She still looks confused, and I don’t blame her.
Corbin doesn’t have a good answer. “Sometimes I like to get the first impression of a story myself. Do you mind if I record?” She has the recording app ready on her phone. Emily nods, and Corbin places it in the center of the table.
I steady my laptop, a blank Word document on my screen. Corbin scooches forward. “We’ll start whenever you’re ready.”
Emily closes her eyes. She releases a tiny breath through her nose. “I guess it starts with a pledge,” she says. “Alpha Delta Theta was not my first rank choice. Honestly, I hadn’t even heard of them until I came to campus.”
“How did you end up pledging?” Corbin asks.
“My best friend, Lucy,” Emily says the name with a sad smile. “We’ve known each other since like, second grade. She wanted to rush the same sororities and we agreed to only pledge if one house accepted both of us. Then rush week came and we went door to door, like you do.”
“Sure,” I nod, even though I have no clue how the sorority selection process even works.
“The thing is, like, I knew there was a very small chance we’d get into the same sorority, but Lucy was so hopeful. She said the ranking process would work in our favor. In the end, we had a stack of offers from different sororities. She was heartbroken.
“See, we only pledged the Alphas because they weren’t exclusive. They branded themselves as, like, an anti-discrimination sorority. All girls welcome, guaranteed entry, as long as you submit to the initiation. Their goal was to ‘shake up’ Greek life, to do things different. I know it sounds tacky, but Lucy fell in love with that pitch after the nightmare of rush week.”
“It’s not tacky,” Corbin says. “For a sisterhood, it’s weird how many hoops girls have to jump through to get into one. I see why a fresh take would be attractive to her.”
This is the strength of Corbin as an interviewer. You wouldn’t know it by just casually talking to her, but she’s an incredible empathizer. She sees the look in Emily’s eyes when Lucy comes up, and she softens her tone. From there, she segues into the next question. “So, she pledges based on that pitch?”
“It wasn’t one pitch,” Emily corrects Corbin. “It’s important you understand, for the story, when I say the Alphas were everywhere I mean ev-er-ry-where,” she taps her finger on the table to emphasize it. “Traditionally, rushing is door to door. The sororities put a lot of work into it, sure, there’s skits, and songs, and dance routines, and, like, little game shows. But it’s still ultimately on PNMs to seek those houses out.”
“PNMs?” I ask.
“Potential new members,” Corbin replies without looking away from Emily.
“By any measure, it’s a huge event that spans the entirety of Greek row,” Emily continues. “Four days-worth of performances and meet-and-greets and interviews. But the Alphas? They were set up on every block of campus. At the library, on the quad, outside the football stadium. They had sisters rotating in on shifts, a different pitch for each recruiting station so nobody saw the same bit twice. This was a sophisticated operation.”
“The numbers that would require…” I start to say.
Emily nods. “The Alphas have the largest membership on campus, but that’s very recent history. When they say that they’re doing things different, they mean it. They don’t just recruit differently, they live differently, they act differently. They proudly live the Five Bs.”
Corbin leans over to whisper to me, “Boys, bibles, booze, ballots, and bucks. Taboo subjects.”
Why does Corbin know so much about this stuff?
“Girls just want to have fun, right?” Emily asks. “So why should we pretend like a sorority is anything deeper? Why should any topic be off limits? That attitude was refreshing after a week of proving my strength of character to housefuls of strangers. By the end of all that, we just wanted to get wasted.”
“Of course,” I agree with an understanding nod.
“The Alphas throw this big party at the end of selections, and everyone is there. See, they aren’t just aggressive recruiters. You can’t grow as big as the Alphas have, as fast as they have, without poaching active members from sororities too.”
I look up from my notes. “Wouldn’t that cause friction among the other houses?”
“You’d think!” Emily’s voice picks up, but she seems to catch herself before reaching a full shout. “But there’s at least one Alpha defector from every sorority, so each house knows somebody at the party. I’m not saying that literally everyone was there, but every house was represented in some way. Alpha Kappa Psi, Epsilon Eta Phi, Beta Phi Alpha, even the racist one. Hell, the girls next door at Pi Delta Kappa offered their house up when the party spilled out of the Alphas’ yard.”
“So, girls from other sororities were at the party to see their old sisters?” Corbin asks.
“Once you become an Alpha, it takes over your life. It becomes the center of everything, anyone outside your new circle is noise. So, when their old sisters came to the party, it was the first time these girls had a chance to connect in a long time.”
“Did the Alphas try to recruit them?” I ask.
Emily shakes her head. “The party is the pitch. The other sorority sisters see how much fun their old friends are having and they start to wonder, ‘Am I really happy as a Beta?’”
“That must have had a big effect on you and Lucy,” Corbin says. “Seeing all those houses there, like you’ve suddenly found the center of the universe.”
“Exactly,” Emily points at Corbin. “But it’s not like the Alphas were without flags. You could tell them from the other sorority girls because they walked around in their short-shorts and their plastic smiles, looking like Barbie dolls. That night, their outfits were synchronized in tight, white t-shirts with the word ‘Alphas’ in pink, glittery text across the chest. The party stayed in the yard and everyone had a great time, chatting and dancing and playing games, and getting very, very drunk.”
“Did you know that Lucy wanted to join?”
“By that point, we were both pretty put-off by the whole thing. We were just there to drink and flirt with boys.
“The weird thing was that the Alphas house was off-limits without a special invitation, but the Pi house next door was like the second location for the party. That’s where people went when they wanted some privacy, you know what I mean?”
“Sure,” I say.
“By the time I got to the Pi house, it was packed, but I found a free spot on the big couch in the living room.” Emily blushes before she continues. “I was getting to know this cute frat boy named Dane there, when I looked up from my spot on the arm of the couch and saw Lucy staring down at me. She had a pair of girls on either side of her, both wearing those unmistakable blue jean shorts and glittery Alphas t-shirts. Lucy was excited, she said that the Alphas had invited her in for a tour of the house, and she wanted to give me a chance to come along. I was a little busy with Dane, so I told her it was cool if she went on without me. I didn’t see Lucy again for the rest of the night.”
“She never came out of the house?” Corbin asks.
Emily shakes her head. “She spent the whole night there. I didn’t feel good leaving Lucy, but it was getting late and the party showed no signs of dying down. So I texted her. She quickly messaged me back that she’d meet me back at the dorm. The next morning, Lucy wasn’t in her bed. It wasn’t until the afternoon when she caught up with me at the library. That’s when she told me, with the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her face, that she was going to join the Alphas.”
“And you were going to join too,” Corbin says.
“It definitely was not a discussion,” Emily replies. “Like, Lucy had just made the decision on her own. She’s speaking a mile a minute to me and I can hardly follow her logic, but the thing that hurts is that she doesn’t consider me at all in her decision. The message I get is that she’s gonna join, and I’m free to follow her, but she’s doing it no matter what. And I remember thinking that wasn’t like her. But she just keeps going back to this one person. ‘You have to meet her,’ she keeps saying. ‘You’ll understand when you meet her.’”
“Who is she?” Corbin asks.
“Madison Wells,” Emily says the name carefully, like it’s made of glass. “She’s the president of Alpha Delta Theta, the genius behind the ‘Alphas’ shake-up. I’ll talk about her in a minute.”
I type the name into my notes. It sits there on the screen in bold font, staring back at me.
“Lucy had this gleeful little squeal when I told her I wanted to pledge with her. We moved into the Alphas house together. My first impression was…not good? Like, after my first tour, I understood why it was off-limits at the party. I thought the Pi house had been packed then, but like, the Alphas had a serious space problem. I’m talking, like, five or six girls to a room. Lucy and I shared one with an upperclassman and three other pledges.
“There was only one bed, and the upperclassman took it for herself. We slept on the floor for the first few weeks, as well as you can sleep in that house. It’s hard to tell if the Alphas ever sleep. The sounds of sex bled through the walls. I was miserable after one night in, but I figured Lucy would come to her senses after a few days.”
“She didn’t though,” Corbin says.
Emily’s smile has completely faded. “After the first night, I asked Lucy, kind of jokingly, if it was all she wanted it to be. She smiled at me and said, ‘It’s even more, don’cha think?’
“The strangest thing about the Alphas is that they have, like, archetypes. Some girls are super outgoing. They’re the ones out there recruiting, putting on a good face for the house. The flirty ones are good communicators, but they’re so sex obsessed that they’re rarely part of the pitches. They lure frat boys to the parties, mostly. Then, there’s the gigglers, Alphas who are so far down the rabbit hole that they can’t even play a role. All they do is giggle and fuck.”
“Did the gigglers concern you?” Corbin asks.
“I mean, I guess I just thought they were really dumb,” Emily explains. “I didn’t want to join a vapid sorority, but the talkers were so good at talking that it lowered my guard.”
Emily pauses to take a breath. She closes her eyes, and I can see that she’s considering her next words carefully. One more breath from her nose, then she says, “I can’t continue without talking about Madison.”
“Okay,” Corbin nods. “We’re ready."
“It’s just that,” Emily looks around the patio. She leans over to study the block behind my shoulder. When she continues speaking, her voice is a notch quieter. “When you live in that house for any amount of time, you get used to being watched. She sees everything, even when you know she isn’t around.”
“You’re safe here,” I assure her with a friendly smile. “No Madisons in sight.”
Emily doesn’t seem confident in my answer, but she moves forward anyway. “I didn’t meet her right away. Instead, I learned about Madison through the other Alphas. There’s always a history component to pledging, but all the Alphas cared about was recent history. Madison was like an obsession, even bigger than sex to them.”
“What did they say about her?”
“The girl in our room was this older Alpha named Angelica. She’d been around even before Madison was president. Every night she would have us gather at the foot of her bed and she’d tell us about Madison’s takeover of the house like a bedtime story.
“‘We didn’t want Madison to be president at first,’ Angelica said. ‘But back then we didn’t see her power, we didn’t understand that we needed someone strong like her to lead us.’ After storytime, Angelica would have us repeat the sorority motto before putting us to bed, like little kids. And that was how each night went, another exaggerated story about Madison rescuing the Alphas from their selfish ways. The girls around the house all talked the same way about her, how Madison had saved them, how she wanted to save us.”
“What was the motto?” Corbin asks.
“One person says, ‘Alpha is everything,’ and we would repeat, ‘There is only Alpha.’”
“Creepy,” I mutter.
“I caught glimpses of Madison around the house, but she was always too busy for me. I was exhausted, but still holding out hope for Lucy to change her mind. In the meantime, I wanted to get in front of Madison, I wanted to hear her ideas directly from her, not parroted by some brainwashed sister.”
That’s the first time Emily calls it what she thinks it is. That word ‘brainwashed,’ which sat in the body of her email like bait in a trap. It’s the reason we’re here, it’s the reason Corbin thinks this could be the story of the decade. Maybe brainwashed sorority sisters make for an incredible headline, but it could also kill a promising career before it’s even started.
I notice the little twitch in Corbin’s nose. Her interest is reaching a climax.
“You used the ‘brainwashed’ in your email,” Corbin says. “What you’ve described so far sounds like cult behavior, but why are you so certain they were brainwashed?”
Emily leans into the table, her voice as low as it can go. “Because that’s Madison’s secret. She’s brainwashed every girl in that house, and she’s trained them to find and brainwash even more girls.” When Emily leans back out, she takes a quick sip of her drink, like she’s letting the weight of her accusation sink in. “The other sororities don’t know. They’re so obsessed with their own numbers, so certain that they’re doing something wrong that they’ve let Madison expand the Alphas unchallenged.
“There were at least a dozen pledges in the house with us. In the second week, we were lined up downstairs in the foyer, asked to strip naked, and presented before Madison herself. By that point, I knew that this was more than just a hazing. Madison marched down the line, explaining that we were naked because, as Alphas, we would have to be our true, authentic selves, nothing between ourselves and her. Afterward, she said that she would be meeting with each of us individually.
“One by one over the next few days, pledges were collected by upperclassmen and escorted down into the basement. They would disappear for hours, sometimes whole days. But inevitably they returned, transformed. Even girls like me who had shown some doubt were suddenly giggly, flirty, eager to participate in the Alphas’ lurid rituals.
“I knew that soon it would be my turn, or Lucy’s, and that once we went down in that basement, neither of us would ever be the same.
“Time was running out when Lucy approached me. She waited until we were in class, away from the house, away from other Alphas, to confess how scared she was.”
Corbin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Lucy was scared the whole time?”
“No,” Emily shakes her head. “She told me that she met Madison for the first time at the party. She said that Madison had a way of speaking which worms its way inside your head, that she can make her thoughts feel like your own. When Madison got her talking, Lucy spilled her life story, all her secrets. It made her feel closer to Madison. It made her want to be an Alpha.
“But Lucy noticed all the same things I had: the cramped conditions, the filthy cries at night, the way the other Alphas obsessed over Madison. What spooked her most, though, was waking up that morning and realizing that those things felt normal to her now.
“I’ll never know how close I came to ending up in the basement, but I know if she hadn’t said something I would have just waited until it was my turn. We made plans to meet up after class to plan our escape, but when I got to the library that night, Lucy wasn't there. Instead, I got a text.”
Emily picks up her phone from the table and passes it across to Corbin. She recites the words on her screen as Corbin reads them. “‘I think Angelica’s on to us. Be cool. I love you.’”
Corbin taps her finger on the tabletop in thought. “What was your first impression of the text?”
Emily sighs, taking her phone back from Corbin. “A little scared. But it was direct in a way that felt authentic to Lucy.”
“Do you think she actually sent it?” Corbin asks.
“I think so, just before they took her to the basement.”
Corbin heaves a frustrated sigh. “When did you see her next?”
“It was early the next morning,” Emily continues. “The text was just vague enough that I could convince myself it meant anything, but that night I hoped that Lucy was far away, working on some plan to get us out. That’s why I went back to the room, how I fell into an uneasy sleep.
“I had the room to myself that night. The other pledges had met Madison in the basement one by one. They belonged to the house now, their rooms changing nightly depending on which Alpha had use for them.”
“Use?” I ask.
“Sex,” Emily hisses. “The pledges were just toys to the Alphas. Each night, a new voice echoed through the halls as pledges were taken in.”
I glance at Corbin. She’s steady as a rock next to me. The usual softness in her eyes strangely absent, replaced by something more like a cold poker face. It makes me nervous when I can’t read her.
“Angelica and Lucy were both missing, so I took it as an opportunity to sleep in a real bed. It was still dark out when I awoke the next morning. I sat up in bed, and I saw her standing there in the doorway. Lucy, completely naked. Damp hair clinging to her skin, body shining in the moonlight. Her chest was heaving, one hand floating just above her crotch, fingers threatening to enter. Inside each of her breaths was a sound that was almost like…like a giggle.”
My breath catches in my throat as I stifle a laugh, flashing a nervous smile. I don’t think the story is funny at all, just that some of the wilder details are tough to believe. Lucy the giggler may be where she loses me.
Thankfully, my interruption goes unaddressed as Emily continues.
“When Lucy speaks, her voice is…euphoric. Her words are trapped between giggles, incoherent, but she tells me not to be afraid. I’m crawling back into the headboard, trying to get as far away from her as I can. She takes a step further into the room, and a shadow follows behind her. It’s Angelica. She enters slowly, the shadow of the doorway pulling back to reveal her naked body. Lucy sticks close to her, like she’s being herded.
“‘That’s right,’ Angelica says softly. ‘There’s no reason to be afraid. We’ll fix you, just like we did Lucy.’ She moves in behind Lucy and she whispers something in her ear.
“Lucy’s dark eyes widen and she gasps, ‘There is only Alpha!’ Her knees buckle and she drops to the floor with a loud, awful cry. Her whole body shakes, she curls into a ball, moaning so loudly her voice rattles the bed.
“I couldn’t help myself. The emotions just build up inside me until I shout, ‘Fuck you!’ Which only makes Angelica smile. She says, ‘It’s time you joined Madison in the basement, Emily.’”
I don’t realize I’m on the edge of my seat until I nearly tip my Highsmith over onto my laptop. Corbin still has her poker face on. She’s either unphased or working very hard to appear unphased. She asks, “How did you escape?”
“Angelica made a mistake,” Emily answers. “Maybe she thought I would fold with Lucy or she was just used to girls bending to her will after a few days in that house, I don’t know, but she underestimated me. She stepped toward the bed to grab me and I swung my foot forward with all the force in my hip and kicked her right in her nasty cunt. She dropped to the floor.
“Lucy was in no condition to chase after me, but I figured I only bought myself a few seconds with Angelica. I leapt from the second floor of the house. It would have been a clean landing, but I clipped my ankle against the windowsill on the way out and I tumbled headfirst onto the lawn. That’s how I messed up my wrist,” Emily gestures with her cast.
“And you just left?” Corbin asks.
“All my stuff’s still at the house,” Emily says with a sad laugh.
“If you need a place to stay, I have a spare couch,” I offer.
“I’m staying with a friend from stats class,” Emily replies. “Her dorm is cramped, but it’s better than losing my mind. I’m just here to get the word out about the Alphas. All I have is my story.” She turns to address Corbin. “Please, you have to help Lucy.”
The softness has returned to Corbin’s eyes. She tilts her head to the side and reaches across the table to take Emily’s hands. “I’ll do my best,” she says.
After an exchange of hugs, Emily leaves us alone on the patio. Corbin’s first words to me after the interview is a question.
“What do you think?”
“I believe it all up to a point,” I admit. “Even if I don’t believe the mind control part, Emily does. She certainly believed it enough to jump out a window.”
Corbin breathes a long sigh, and it’s like the weight is lifting from her body. I realize now just how much she’s been holding inside. She says quietly, “I think I believe every word of it.”
And that’s good enough for me.
When Corbin started the Watchblog, she did most of her work out of the Carpenter State Library. Now, we have our own office in the journalism building, a courtesy from one of Corbin’s admiring professors. We pick up Little Caesar’s on our way there.
The office is a windowless room with cold, white brick walls. There is a row of computers on the back wall but we mostly work on our personal laptops at the conference table in the middle of the room. Corbin’s process can be slow, but it’s fun to watch. Fueled by Crazy Bread and Red Bull, she plays back the recording a dozen times, scribbling details onto index cards which she sticks to the walls. The cards line the office like wallpaper. To anyone unfamiliar with Corbin’s process, it looks like a paranoid tapestry. But Corbin has a system, when she looks at the walls, she sees the full picture.
“We need more sources than Emily’s interview,” I say, scanning through the notes in my word document. “Corroborate her story with an Alpha, maybe.”
Corbin shakes her head. “Absolutely not. If it is brainwashing, we don’t know how Madison does it. Sending you in to develop sources is just too dangerous until we know what exactly we’re dealing with.”
Sending me in, that’s how it has to be. Corbin’s profile is just too high to start snooping around the Alphas.
“We have to move diagonally on this one.”
Corbin says this a lot about our work. The most direct path isn’t always a straight line, sometimes you have to move diagonally. She stole it from a movie.
Emily’s voice echoes through Corbin’s phone, “...Hell, the girls next door at Pi Delta Kappa offered their house up…”
Corbin scribbles on a card, then lifts it up for me to read it. Pi Delta Kappa.
“We’ll start with the other sororities,” she says. “They’re playing it safe with the Alphas right now, but I’m sure there’s enough resentment that they’ll talk to me.”
“Maybe,” I reply. “According to the Foghorn, though, Pi Delta Kappa voted last week to merge with the Alphas.” I spin my laptop around so Corbin can see the article.
“Shit,” Corbin drops the card onto the table. She strikes a line through the sorority’s name, then adds something else beneath it. “I guess that solves her space problem.”
I take my laptop back and scan through the article. “Ana Marino’s the only quote in here that isn’t from an Alpha. ‘Having a diverse selection of Greek houses is an essential part of the sorority experience on campus…’ Blah, blah, blah… ‘as other houses consider similar consolidations, my hope is that…’ This is the president of Beta Phi Alpha. She sounds pissed, doesn’t she?”
“Beta Phi Alpha,” Corbin repeats to me as she writes it down on a fresh card. “We can start here.”
“We should plan for how to tackle the Alphas at some point,” I say. “An interview with Madison…”
“Piper,” Corbin looks at me with those big mom eyes she has sometimes. “I need you to promise me that you’ll stay away from that house.”
It surprises me that Corbin is so rattled. If Emily’s story is true, the Alphas exhibit all the signs of a cult. But actual mind control? It’s movie stuff. The longer we wait to move on this story, the more time Madison has to abuse Lucy. So why does Corbin seem just as afraid of the basement as Emily was?
Corbin and I have a rule. We don’t keep secrets during investigations, and we don’t let bad feelings fester. So, I come right out with it. “Why are you so afraid of taking this head-on?”
Once again, Corbin’s posture straightens and her expression becomes unreadable. That look is creepier when it’s directed at me. “What Lucy described to Emily,” she says, rifling through her stack of cards. When she finds the one she’s looking for, she reads it back to me. “‘She spilled her life story, all her secrets.’”
“Lucy told Emily it made her feel closer to Madison,” I remember with a nod.
“Some cults use confession to extract deeply personal secrets from its members. These secrets can be used to blackmail them if they ever try to leave, but more commonly it endears them to the cult. One method of extraction is rapid fire questioning, intended to force the member into speaking without thinking. These sessions can go on for hours, they become so exhausting that a person can lose their own sense of self. See, Piper, it’s not just an interrogation. It’s a form of hypnosis.”
“You think that Madison hypnotized Lucy?” I ask.
“Yes,” Corbin replies. “Everything else: the cramped rooms, the uncomfortable sleeping spaces, the recitations, stripping nude…it’s all mental manipulation, intended to wear down the pledges’ wills. Emily described it herself, she said that she would have waited there forever if Lucy hadn’t confronted her. The key is in the basement, but I think Madison has more than just hypnosis in her toolkit.”
“Why?”
“The archetypes,” Corbin holds up another card. Talkers, Teasers, Gigglers. “Somehow, she’s erasing identities, replacing them with stock personalities. Work like that requires a lot more than a soothing voice and a swinging pocketwatch. She has a methodology, something more permanent.”
Now it’s my turn to play poker. I can’t let Corbin see the concern on my face. I can’t let her know that I’m doubting her. “You got all of that from the interview?”
“It’s all there, you just have to listen,” Corbin says. “The point is that head-on is just too dangerous in this situation. You can go out and find an Alpha recruiter today and be in their house tomorrow. You can tell yourself that you’re there to develop sources, you can cling to the mission and you can know that they’ll try to manipulate you. But sooner or later, you’ll have to meet Madison face-to-face, and without knowing how she’s controlling the other sisters, she could develop you. That’s why I need you to promise me, Piper. We move diagonally.”
I take a small breath to steady myself. I remember: if Corbin believes it, that’s good enough for me.
“I promise, Corb. We move diagonally.”
