Page 264 of Light Leech

That was all we were. Flawed people trying to do our best.

Boyband slapped her.

Trying to do our best just like him.

“Nothing,? Really?” He guffawed. “Fine, we’ll take a break from criticizing you. Tell us what your Light Leech did and why we all had a kid’s toy battle fever dream.”

“My Light Leech lets me manipulate ands and turn them into vehicles.”

“Cool, but that doesn’t explain the zegging hallucinations.”

She scoffed. “That was all Veren. Before heading in to meet you–”

“To kill me, which you failed to do.”

She nodded. “I researched the ands on the premise, even though I knew many were disguised as humans. Veren was a high tier and I had seen her therapeutic work with kids, allowing them to revert to childhood memories for cognitive practice.”

“Sounds like a fun excuse for manipulating their minds.”

She shrugged. “Are you surprised?”

“No, just upset that it worked on us.”

“I amplified the signal. It’s not magic, you know, just a reskinning of your vision and a mind modification, all tied to your neurospace.”

“Ascend.” Zhu’s reminder echoed loudly in my mind.

“I think we’ve learned enough,” Ralia said.

“What about what these Light Leaches are?” asked Boyband.

She looked at Kalacia. “Do you know? No? What about who is running Pure Knowledge? Why our mods aren’t working?”

Kalacia shrugged, lacking confidence.

“I think we’ve run her dry, BB. She’s just another wannabe scholar who can’t answer the questions you bombarded her with.”

“Then what now?”

“We gotta head into the neurocore. I’m not saying it’ll be simple to double the admittance, but this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve used someone else’s access to enter a database. You ready, Pet?”

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Pulse. BB, come put your hand on my neuroset. I’ll trigger your death, then Pet and I will attempt admittance.“ Ralia pulled two light lines from her neuroset, attaching one to the base of her skull and the other to mine. “Like I said, we won’t be able to communicate with ourselves once we’re inside, but I should be able to see out here if we succeeded or not.”

“Then what. We wait?”

She shook her head. “While our other halves work in the core, we on the outside will focus on whatever Abbas has from Haven.”

“And David.” Boyband looked at me.

Ralia crinkled her nose.

I nodded. “It’s important, Ral.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“I’ll go grab him!” Denji exclaimed, running down the hall despite Ralia’s protests to wait.