18. Enter the Dynasty #5
Ralia: I plug. I’m assuming you need a place to drop the body?
Petya: Yeah, and a way to feed without making it look obvious. Should I go for a euphoritab to put him in a daze?
Ralia: No chance you have one.
Petya: This is the top of the Violet. These are the people who make the rules, not keep them.
Ralia: Euphoritab, you really want to leave him on a high note like that? If he deserves it, why not go hard with a final punch?
Petya: I guess.
Ralia: Are you sure you want to let him give you a surprise?
Petya: I’ll have Zhu help if it’s that bad of a fix.
Ralia: Sure that’ll work?
Petya: Just hurry. We’re not moving too fast and the shac is going to ask why I’m in here messaging.
Ralia: Then why not try, yourself? You’re the fix user.
Petya: Low blow, Ral.
Ralia: Low blow or a wake-up call? You’re with the zegging Neon Idol so you should have tapered your usage down a little, right?
Petya: Not the time to talk about it.
Ralia: I’m glad you’re reaching out. Do you feel anything weird from your neurocore self?
Petya: RALIA PLEASE FOCUS BEFORE I FEED ON THE WRONG PERSON.
Ralia: Two steps. First, you gotta give him a berzerkitab. Insult him a bit before it hits him so you’re the obvious target when the rage hits.
Petya: Does it do what I think?
Ralia: Gangs will give them to their weaklings who struggle with dirty work.
I’ve heard stories of Republic military usage as well.
I bet they’re using it in the war right now.
Of course it’s banned everywhere, but they can excuse it if they need to flip the switch in a soldier’s mind to tell them that a young Arabasian kid protecting a valuable resource is a terrorist. Think you can handle a little rage?
Plus, those Violet sadists will probably love a little violence. Earn some respect.
Petya: I’ll do my best to escort him out.
Ralia: Then you might want to try something other than a berzerkitab.
Petya: I mean, I’ll try my best not to cause a scene.
Ralia: Good luck.
Petya: And the second part is getting the body out of there?
Ralia: Yes. Put on a show as much as you want, but even if those sick freaks would celebrate a death, I wouldn’t risk staining your reputation.
Petya: I doubt they would let the public know about anything going on here. I’m pretty sure if I looked around I could find some way to ruin plenty of these elites’ saint-like public image.
Ralia: That doesn’t mean they won’t remember it. The public doesn’t matter. These are the people in power. Any idea what that Zhou du has that made the Luxists concerned?
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?”
“Come on, I’m just trying to have some fun!”
“Because we’re the only people who can handle being with you long enough to hear you speak more than a few words?
“The zeg is your problem?”
I leaned in and smacked my fix module onto the back of his neck. “I know about your streaming scandal and I have all the right connections to leak it!”
He smacked his module on the back of my neck before I could pull away.
My hatred dissipated. I looked back at Naoma. Zeg. I pulled her in tight. Close. I kissed her with more passion than I had ever felt.
Zeg, what had he given me?
I pressed my tongue into her mouth and licked her teeth. I was far too close, but the burning passion of the fix was stronger than my hunger. I caressed her, wanting to stop and focus, but she was an Idol I wanted to worship with everything that I was. Her eyes. Oh. Her hips. Oh.
Stop!
Her body. Face. Delicate fingers. Slender legs. Carnal passion triumphed over the love that I had felt. I reached for the opening of her dress and used my other hand to raise my shirt.
The body of an enraged Kell saved me from going too far. He slammed into me.
“Focus, Bakuh.”
Zhu ate up the rest of my reserve. My mind cleared for a second as the fix dissipated and anger returned to fuel me. The only reason I could hold any sense was because I understood that this rage was the path towards feeding.
I punched his face, but he did not relent.
I punched it harder, using my enhanced strength and knocked a tooth free.
I looked to see where it had fallen but felt it embedded in between my knuckles.
I had enough sense to hide my next action as I bushed my hand against my bleeding mouth and slid the tooth into it.
I chewed and instantly absorbed it to gain another step towards mental clarity.
I kicked him off and stood, but he did not let a second pass before charging me.
I ran to the balcony and stood my ground. I checked over the edge before he slammed into me. We were on the second level but would soon hit the artificial terrain below.
He attempted to strangle me as we plummeted, but the shock of the ground took the air out of the both of us.
We had fallen onto a hedge, saving him where I was sure I would have survived either way.
Looking up–though it was hard to concentrate with his hands still back on my neck–I saw that the second level was higher than I had thought.
I gave him an uppercut and heard something crack, but he did not let go.
My vision was darkening. I should have been focusing on him, but my attention was fixed on the balcony as more spectators gathered to see what had happened. He attacked first. That was all I needed to confirm the narrative I would give them.
As long as I survived.
At that moment, I didn’t care about breathing.
I had burned my reserve to the end. He might have been enhanced by a wrath-driven fix, but my voracious hunger was more feral and a lion compared to his rat.