Page 377 of Light Leech

Zhou laughed at her. “Like you’re getting away without your part being reveal–”

She slapped him. “You’ve covered up worse, I’m sure. Nobody talks about what happens here anyway, right?”

He started to grin again. Her hand glowed white as she slapped him again.

“Zeg!” he cried out and clutched her handprint that had branded his cheek.

“Light bless whoever decided it was a good idea to let you ands feel pain.”

“What?” I guffawed.

She nodded. “We’ll get to that.”

“You know nothing, Neon Idol.”

Her hand glowed as she readied another strike. “Then you can help me with that.

“Do you have any light-infused handcuffs, Zhou?” I asked. “I saw plenty of kinky guk going on.

“Don’t worry. I’ll obey.”

“I’m sure,” Naoma said.

“Let me try something.” I worked my way back onto the orca’s back. I commanded her to extend her tentacles and wrap one around Zhou. “Will this work?”

Naoma nodded. “Me next. Not as tight, please.”

“Right.” I did as she requested, then lifted them both up a few inches so I didn’t have to walk behind them at a drudging pace.

We cleared the first floor with no problem and the capacious stairwell was wide enough to only cause a little damage to the railings and hanging tapestries.

The orca rammed her chrome-ended tail into the wall for extra measure. Feeling relieved that she was acting somewhat of her own accord, I didn’t say a thing.

A few more Eunuchs tried to stop us on our way to the throne room. Those who did not stand down when I threatened Zhou with a tentacle to the head were easy to slay. The other elites fled as we made our way to the throne room. Rather than break through the doorway, the orca let us down and faced back down the hall to stop anyone who thought they might have a chance at interrupting our interrogation.

“Dock.” Naoma pointed to Zhou’s throne. He was still standing after the orca had tossed him across the room while she let Naoma down as if she were a flower.

He grumbled and worked his way towards the throne. As he sat, I noticed a faint pulse of violet light everywhere his body touched the forgery of ancient Arabasian royal decor.

I ran to Naoma’s side.

“I noticed that when we first came in,” she said. “That light isn’t for show and there weren’t any viable mods that pulsed while being charged.”

“What if he has something under his clothes? And there are plenty of subdermal mods.”

“That’s what I thought. After he took you out I wanted a closer look to see what kind of mods we might be up against.” She glared at Zhou. “This shac probably thought me brushing up on him was sincere.”

Zhou smirked. “You’ve been programmed to do worse. Tell me, when did you break out of the cognitive shell?”

“All it took was Reef to push me far enough to break it. I assume that was your doing, wasn’t it?”

“Finish the seat thing first,” I said.

She looked back at me. “I got a closer look at his seat. I didn’t need to search for hidden mods. He was one. We used those same charging docks for my concert backup dancers. Reef didn’t want people to know we were using artificial humans. While they had the lumens to employ real people, Anton didn’t trust humans to do the job. Those docks are meant to appear like your standard mod and tech chargers, but there is a distinct film to that light that penetrates deep into the user’s body.”

I looked at Zhou’s seat and pushed him aside to see where the light was emanating. “I don’t see any difference.”

She pointed at her eyes. “Most people can’t see the difference. They programmed my neurospace to see the difference because, after all, they were my dancers.”