Page 123 of Light Leech

Petya: Not yet. I can’t concentrate until I feed.

Ralia: Right. Give me a second.

Pulse, I checked the incoming drone shipments to your location. Do you want something easy or messy? Trust me, you might want messy in this case.

Petya: Why?

Ralia: You want to stick it to these shacs?

Petya: How bad are we talking?

Ralia: I can’t see everything happening there, but the deliveries helped me tap into a couple of the rooms. Seems like they have plenty of indulgent themes, one being an exotic meat room.

Petya: No.

Ralia: Too late, I’m not giving you another option. One of the last selections was worse than a fattened penguin with liver failure.

Petya: Say it.

Ralia: Fetus. Yes, it was human. The price was astronomical, but they’ve tried it multiple times from every continent.

Petya: Zeg. Do it.

Ralia: Good, because I would rather not name some of the other rooms. These people are sick, Petya. I’m trying not to hate every violet elite and know that a bunch of people probably go to that place to network, but I pray that most of the other Violet citizens and other celebrities never knew this filth existed.

Petya: I pray, too.

I knew Ralia didn’t subscribe to my Cross Following beliefs with her open deific interpretation, but I found solace that her words didn’t allude to the Light that these hedonists worshipped.

Ralia: A shipment of fresh meat is coming in sometime in the next twenty minutes. Lucky for you, they are expecting that fattened penguin that I mentioned. Though they were hoping for fine cuts, I’m going to tap into the drone’s tools and turn this into processed meat. They’ll probably bitch about it, but they’ll eat it, nevertheless. I’m sure I can change the order to show “processed” just to gaslight them a little more. You’ll need to leave the building and head to a spot just outside the property because once it enters the boundaries of that building, it’ll head for drop-off at the kitchen window. I’ll send you a pin and the drone will pick up the body, process it, then discard the bones and offal elsewhere. You don’t have to be there in time for pickup, just there before it arrives. You plug?

Petya: I can’t tell if I hate it or love it, but let’s do it.

I sent Naoma a quick message, hoping she would see it in her periphery.

Petya: When things go down, stay here. Please. I need you to stay safe until I come back to the property. Clear your throat if you understand.

I exited my Neurospace and tried to jump into Kell’s ramblings to Naoma, but he stopped and focused on me before I could catch a hold of the conversation. “Back with us again, du? Come on, you’re at a party, learn how to get out of your zegging neurospace for once.

Naoma cleared her throat.

I covered the truth with another truth. “Sorry, it’s a habit thing, you know? I held off from using a socitab, but–”

“There we go! Why settle with one of those lame fixes when you can have the whole catalogue? Ready to jump in? I have yours ready to go!”

“Here?” I looked around, trying to keep my eyes away from him as the panic settled in. There. “What about that garden area?”

“Why? I think right here would be–”

“Trust me, you’ll want the night sky for your fix.”

“I have no zegging idea what you’re alluding to but I love it.”

He led the way down the hall and through the glass doors I had spotted. I breathed out into the night air, relieved to see that it was a garden terrace full of shaped hedges and foreign flora I had only seen on the neuronet. There were still plenty of people around, but nowhere near as many as inside. I kept my music down, but the signal was still strong outside to keep the thirty or so people around us caught in between the feeling of being both in and out of the palace.

He swiped his finger on the fix module’s screen and held it out. “Ready?”

“Zeg, are you always this impatient?”