Page 34 of Light Leech

“Your act failed,” Sanna said. “Once you made the move to speak to a higher authority, I called in–”

“Someone butt-hurt because my parents weren’t corporate shacs like them?”

Veren laughed. “After we cleansed the council of your parents, I filled their spot.”

“So who the zeg are you?” Boyband asked.

Veren opened her mouth, not to answer, but to extend her jaw beyond human limits. Cybernetic cords flashing with blue light kept her head together while the fragments split into an open-mouthed abyss. Her appendages extended, held together by similar cybernetics.

We peddled back, watching Veren expand. I watched Sanna, expecting her to transform as well. Instead, she hopped on Veren’s growing body, gripping an indigo bridle that had extended from the hellish mount.

We gawked at the abomination of technology and beast before us.

Zhu snorted.

I was relieved to have him at bay and glad to have Naoma and Boyband at the ready.

Kuni.

I glanced back. Naoma stood before him, a white aura pulsing around her.

“You seek to know what you cannot comprehend with such feeble minds,” Sanna said atop her mount.

The thing that had been Veren crept forward. Her arms and legs had split lengthwise, expanding with the swell of blue light. Seeing her–it–now, I took in what looked like a human stretched into the shape of a spindly arachnoid. Her head had expanded and split, leaving her violet lights where her eyes had been and a deep indigo abyss glowing in her tunnel of a mouth. Shredded clothing had fallen around her.

A familiar dark aura pulsed around both of them, but more vividly around Sanna.

Zhu, is this anything like the therapist?

“I feel its false light.”

Is that a yes? I’m not going to have another vision of a family I never had, right?

I jumped out of the way as one of Veren’s legs stabbed the ground where I had stood. A black hole remained where she had missed me.

Boyband had done the same. Kuni cried out as Naoma jumped with him to the side with a graceless landing, pulling Kuni to the ground with her.

I readied my agility mod and burned by Bite reserve. I jumped up, expecting to land on top of the mount with Sanna. My jump was no higher than that of a typical man’s, yet my reserve still burned.

Zeg. I had forgotten about our mod blocks.

Rather than try to smash me with a leg again, Veren peddled back and opened her abyss of a mouth.

Colors pulsed. Light within the end of that tunneling mouth grew brighter.

She seemed taller. Looked kinder.

Zeg, what is happening?

“Focus, bakuh.”

Do you understand?

“Your mind is frail, just as it was when facing the therapist.”

He was right. The sensation was oddly similar, but I did not feel the dread of an incoming dream. I was not entering a new world, but one was entering mine.

Naoma was a frightened young girl, not the Neon Idol, but a young girl dressed in a knockoff costume.