Page 401 of Light Leech

“How so?”

Don paused. “Our work?”

“Exactly. Worry not, dear friend, for the whole truth is now yours.”

“What? Why?”

“The Dokkaebi has been in the hands of the Journeymen Gui throughout all of our lives. Including mine on the old Earth.”

My mind raced. There were no more veils and I wanted to panic. They knew about the Journeymen. The Gui. What didn’t they know?

Mister Kim continued. “What would it have done to your work ethic if you had known that your leader was in pieces?”

“Like that snake-nosed antagonist from the wizarding school novels of old Earth?” a younger man asked.

Mister Kim nodded. “I am glad to hear that you have read such ancient classics, Michael.”

Michael nodded with a sheepish grin.

“Don,” Mister Kim said, “let me ask again. What would it have done to your work ethic if you had known that your leader was in pieces?”

“Pure Knowledge could not function.” Don said. “The world would slip into the truth and lose the illusion the Correction has created.”

“Exactly.”

“So our work thus far might have been in vain? The Dokkaebi is shattered? What guk is this?”

“Hope returned,” Miss Kholleo said.

Don laughed and gestured towards her. “What guk is that? Huh? Dear Leader Kim? Since when has hope ever been a tenant of the Correction?”

“It hasn’t,” Mister Kim replied, his tone was dry but his scolding gaze focused on Don rather than on Miss Kholleo. “It’s something we feel to imbeciles like you who would have capitulated if they knew the reality of our situation. Your whining is proof enough that, had you known the truth, you would have succumbed to fear.”

“How does this change our circumstances?” a bald woman asked.

“Thank you, Helene, for a question with a purpose.”

She grinned.

“We were as scattered books,” Kim began, “but now we have a librarian. The Light Leech remnants of Dokkaebi were but starlight where we needed the sun. I am only a touch more than a man. My knowledge is based on study and technological integration. Dokkaebi has no need for study. While we function as scholars of the modern day, no one knows the tide and the truths of ancient history as much as a being that has experienced it all.“ He gestured to Ralia.

She looked around the room. Everyone’s faces were full of confusion, save Kim’s close associates and Don who continued to ridicule the gestures of the man whom he had called “Dear Leader.”

“Now,” Kim demanded. No exclamation, no threat, just a word that even I wanted to obey.

She stepped forward and he placed his hand on one of the plates on the back of her neck. The light lines in his hands glowed, then pulsed in sync with those on Ralia.

His face disappeared from the prism, a violet cloud replacing him even though he continued to speak. “With my fragment of Dokkaebi and the fragments holding the Correction, we will now join them to the being itself. The neuronet’s knowledge and cohesion are as an outdated database prone to corruption compared to the cognitive network that we will have with… well, why don’t we hear it from the being himself?”

Ralia gasped, choked on her breath, then let out a long, steady moan.

Kim pulled his hand back. Multiple violet light lines connected the base of her skull to his hand. He stretched the lines, each of them pulling as if an electrical current was running down them and connected them to a metallic hub on the floating circle.

The violet cloud in the prison room formed into a dense shape as Ralia’s light fed it. What looked like an egg turned into a being in a fetal position, stretching its limbs as it awoke a deep hibernation.

“You are free!” Kim said. “No longer bound to the Journeymen and this shell of a human.”

“I am still connected to her,” the thing said. “Remove her hypothalamic implant and integrate the data into the system.”