Page 261 of Light Leech

“No more acting. You’re mine now.”

“He gets a kick out of this, doesn’t he?” Naoma whispered.

I shrugged. “Not sure I feel good about him liking it, but he does what he needs to.”

“Where–” Kalacia began.

Boyband cut her off with an indelicate pat on her cheek. “We’re out of the school, ma’am, which means I’m the one that gets to quiz you.”

“I’m so sorry, Mister Elcaine, this is all–”

He slapped her. “Okay look, we’ve moved past your show. Your name is Kalacia. You found a way into my old school because you’re a creep who heard where I was going. You had a contract for us and the reward is…”

Her eyes were wide and her jaw agape.

“Do you really need me to help you along? The reward is admittance to…”

Her eyes flashed. A second later, she convulsed and groaned as she reopened her eyes, no longer flashing.

“The zeg was that?” Boyband laughed.

“She tried to retreat to the neurocore,” Ralia said. “I blocked her and chose to not let her out without a little seizure.”

“Looks like it had a kick.” He patted her cheek. “Well, zeg, looks like you can’t run away.”

“Look, I’m just a researcher trying to move up!”

“Are we really going to revert back to that? You weren’t even a teacher.”

“I never said I was! Believe me, I did what I had to, to move on to the next step.”

“And what is that step?”

She whimpered, biting her lower lip.

“Let me help you with that.” He gripped her jaw with one hand, fingers digging into the gap between her teeth and lips. He jabbed the other into her mouth as he pulled it open, then ripped out her front teeth. He showed her his prize, raised his eyebrows, then popped them in his mouth. She shrieked and trembled, unable to move her unbound arms. I could hear Boyband’s exaggerated crunching over the sound of her crying.

He laughed.

Zeg, I hated that woman for trying to kill us.

But still.

Laughter. Laughter In the face of torture and pain.

However corrupt this woman was, she was doing what she believed was good, even if that good only benefitted herself under the weight of the world suffering.

Perhaps she was now realizing her mistakes. None of that mattered. Guilty or not–though I knew well how guilty she was–there was no need to rejoice in her pain.

I felt this. Understood this on some level, yet the carnal man won.

I smiled along with his laughter.

Here we all were, vile beings forced to do what we thought good.

How did we differ from her?

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want to face that reality, even though I had already accepted that the survival of the world was contingent on the savagery we pursued.