They moved through the crowd finally spotting Vi who was scanning over a list.

“Hey,” he called out to her. Vi looked up, startled. Finally she sighed heavily, running a hand through her dark green hair.

“I’m checking it again,” she said, gesturing to the thin sheet of metallic paper in her hand. “Mexy was most definitely not on the hit list. This is an execution party, not a G_D damn murder whoever you like party. This was one of the first events I’ve ever had a high position in and it’s already a fucking disaster.” Jenx gave a little shrug.

“Well, at least they’ll probably execute the murderer at the next party extremely dramatically.” Vi sighed.

“Yeah...I guess you’re right.” She suddenly caught sight of the girl now. “Who’s she.” Jenx swallowed hard, attempting to figure out how to explain the situation to her. It was much easier telling it to a drunk Yasha who probably wouldn’t even remember it in the morning.

“Okay….well this girl...is the prince’s sister.” Vi furrowed her brow.

“What are you talking about? The prince doesn’t have a sister, everyone would know if he did.” Jenx took a deep breathe, pinching the bridge of his nose as he attempted to explain.

“Honestly, I don’t know much about it. I just know people are after her and if we don’t hide her...well...I’m not sure what will happen but it won’t be good.” Vi stared at the girl then back at Jenx.

“Jenx are you drunk?”

“No.” Vi was silent for a beat before she suddenly glanced down at the girl’s wrist.

“Holy shit...where’s her chip?”

“She doesn’t have one.” Vi’s eyes widened.

“That’s not possible Jenx. She couldn’t have gotten in here without one.”

“There’s something weird about her. She has some sort of...shit I’m not sure how to explain it-”

“Jenx,” Vi said suddenly, cutting him off. “I would love to help you...I really would but, shit man. This is waaaaay too much of a mess. I’m this fucking close to finally snatching Mexy’s job and I can’t afford to lose it over some girl that you can’t even explain…” she stopped. The girl was staring at her intently and Vi suddenly grasped her hands to her head as if attempting to hold the very pieces of her skull together. Finally Aila stopped, and Vi stumbled a few feet back. “Holy shit,” she murmured. Jenx blinked.

“What just…”

“I’ll help her,” Vi stated matter of factly, causing her to receive a confused look from Jenx. “I’ll try to find a way to slip her out without anyone noticing. If she never received a card chip it shouldn’t trigger the alarm. You just stay here and act natural.”

“What did she do…? Did she try to talk to you in your head? She did that to me once. What did she tell you?” Vi shook her head.

“Yeah, she talked to me. As for what she said...it’s nothing you ever need to know. You can let this go now Jenx it’s not your problem anymore.”

“But...I don’t think it’s safe for me to go back to my apartment after the party…”

“She says you’ll be fine. She’s looked ahead, they won’t hurt you.” Jenx took a step forward.

“What do you mean looked ahead?” Vi sighed softly, resting a hand on Jenx’s shoulder.

“Listen Jenx, just enjoy the rest of the party. Everything is going to be fine. I’ve got it from here.” And with that Vi wrapped an arm around Ailia’s shoulder and led her off into the crowd. Jenx swallowed hard before returning to the party himself. He hung out with Yasha and Nibs a bit who were both way too drunk to realize that anything was wrong with him. A few more dead bodies turned up over the course of the event, one on a banquet table that was wheeled in, another rising up from the dance floor amongst the dancers. Now that these were actually planned deaths everyone simply cheered whenever one of the cities criminals on the hit list turned up dead throughout the event. Jenx wasn’t able to find Vi by the time the party ended and after about an hour of waiting in line to get his chip removed he made his way back through the darkened streets alone by foot. It was a much longer walk then he had anticipated and he received a few unwelcome cat calls from the shadow of figures in the darkness. Finally he arrived at his apartment. It was a relief when he finally tossed off his shoes, his feet were aching. Normally he would head off to the aux room for a bit to unwind before heading off to bed but he simply couldn’t tonight, just the thought of it made him feel sick. Instead he made his way back to his room, changing into an oversized shirt and a pair of pajama pants. He was about to climb into his sleeping pod when suddenly there was a rapping sound at the door. His blood turned to ice water. Hadn’t Aila said he would be safe? It could be Vi...shit what if she was in trouble? Trembling slightly he made his way to the door and opened it. A young man was standing there, a dark blue suit clinging to his tall slender frame. He had dark blue black hair and wore an extremely heavy amount of eyeliner around his narrowed, violet eyes. He scoffed when he glanced behind Jenx at the insides of his apartment.

“You actually live in a dirty hole like this? Ugh, it makes me feel faint even contemplating entering it. There’s probably germs crawling everywhere. Hold on.” The man’s voice had a slight rasp to it. He dug around in his pocket, pulling out a thin bottle, and then proceeded to spray his hands with some kind of purple handsanetizer. When he finished he then fished further into his pocket pulling out a pair of latex gloves which he put on and some kind of medical mask which he pulled up over mouth. He took a deep breathe. “Alright, I am ready to come inside.” He didn’t even ask for Jenx’s permission, he simply pushed past him. “Really,” he murmured to himself, “your home only had one set of locks. You really must take your life extremely lightly, not that I blame you.” Jenx blinked, confused.

“What?”

The man glanced around, noticing the ragged couch that sat at the center of Jenx’s tiny apartment.

“Is this really the only place to sit down you have?” Jenx nodded slowly.

“Yeah...that and the aux room.” The man rolled his eyes.

“Fine, it will have to do, an aux room is no place for a conversation.” He scanned over the flat again. “I have no idea how you people live like this.” Despite all laws of ‘pocket physics’ the man managed to pull out some kind of latex sheet from his pocket and laid it down over a little section of the couch before he sat down on it slowly. “What are you simply standing around for,” he snapped. “Make me some tea.” Jenx swallowed hard.

“I...don’t have any.” The man rolled his eyes again.

“Of course you don’t, uncultured little shrimp.” He waved one latex gloved hand. “I suppose it’s for the best, it would probably have been contaminated anyways.” Jenx fought the urge to punch this man and instead took a deep breathe.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my home?” The man wrinkled his nose.

“I don’t think I would call this a home. To even call it a hovel would be extremely gracious.”

“Who. The fuck. Are you?” The man shot him a glare.

“You seriously don’t know?”

“Should I?” He sighed heavily from behind his medical mask, rolling his eyes yet again.

“Rifter, Rifter Thornton?” The name sounded familiar but Jenx couldn’t remember where he had heard it before, thus he just continued to stare at him blankly. Rifter gave an exasperated sigh. “Do you live under a rock? I literally created arcAdia.” Jenx’s eyes widened.

“Holy shit...you’re…”

“Yeah, Rifter Thornton, soul creator and designer of arcAdia, became a billionaire when I was only 16, best friend of prince Florzel, starting to ring a bell?” Jenx nodded slowly. “Uuuugh, I hate talking to stupid people. Then again, that’s practically everyone when you have a mind like mine. I can’t believe Florzel sent me all the way here to this dump.” Jenx froze.

“Florzel sent you?” Rifter nodded slowly.

“Yes, he said he doubted that you would listen to him and seeing how stupid you already seem to be I can see why.” He removed his gloves a moment to do another spray of the purple hand sanitizer which was so pungent sprayed inside that it caused Jenx to cough. Rifter resumed talking as he pulled his latex gloves back on. “We need to find the girl.” Jenx crossed his arms.

“I’m not going to let you have her.” Rifter shot him a glare.

“Listen shrimp, Florzel and I are not the villains here, you are.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Rifter pulled out a photo from his seemingly bottomless pocket and handed it to Jenx. It was a huge group photo, in the picture there was a group of about 100 people, they looked like scientist.

“See these people,” Rifter said slowly. “She killed every single one of them to escape. She exploded their brains,” he proceeded to attempt to do some sort of sound effect for the action of ‘brain exploding’. “Pop...pshhh….pew pew. It’s kind of like playing wackamole with human skulls except from like...the inside out.” Jenx’s stomach was twisting to knots.

“W-What…”

“Yeah, that’s right shrimp, you just let an extremely dangerous individual escape. If we don’t find her it’s going to get ugly. We don’t plan to hurt her of course, we think with her powers she could become one of the greatest weapons the planets ever known. She still needs a lot of training and research done on her before it’s safe to let her out of the facility and reveal her to the world, case made by the amount of brain mush currently to the ceiling of the facility at the moment. That’s why it’s seriously dire, little shrimp, that you tell me where she is.” Jenx sighed heavily.

“I don’t know.”

“What the frick do you mean you don’t know?”

“Did you just say frick?”

“Beside the point!”

“My friend has her, I have no idea where she brought her. Ai...err...I mean...the girl talked to her inside her head and then they went off together.”

“Frick,” Rifter mutered. “Frick, frick, frick. Who’s the friend?” Jenx hesitated. Rifter scowled at him. “You have my word I won’t hurt her. We just need to find the girl before someone gets hurt.”

“Vi Martin.”

“Thanks, I’ll look her up on my database when I return back to the capital. Ugh, Florzel is such a blockhead, he never should have gone after her without a solid plan. I only stayed behind because I can not stand execution parties.” He removed his gloves yet again to spray another coat of the hand sanitizer. Jenx was starting to realize that it smelled like chemical lilac. “Not that I can’t appreciate the idea behind them of course, it’s quite genius really. You force whole populations together for required parties and simply take out the undesirable low life that you don’t want in your society any more. The best part is you don’t even need to mask it, everyone just assumes that the people who are killed deserved it and simply see it as entertainment. Just proves that if you add enough glitz and glamour you can sugar coat literally anything. The parties keep everyone in line and take care of society's undesirables, I imagine a genius similar to myself came up with it all those years ago.”

“Florzel didn’t seem to really understand what an execution party was.” Rifter rolled his eyes for the fourth time, Jenx had been counting.

“Of course he didn’t. Despite his bad boy appearance he’s extremely sheltered and naive. I think that was one of the first times he’s ever even gone to a lower level district.” Rifter stood up slowly. “I wish I could say that this chat has been lovely little shrimp but it hasn’t. Now, I really need to continue to search for the princess, I have some serious personal stake in it.”

“Besides her being a threat to humanity and a possible weapon for you to use?” Rifter nodded slowly.

“Yeah, she’s my fiancee.” Jenx’s eyes widened.

“WHAT?” Rifter simply ignored him, moving towards the door.

“Bye shrimp, hopefully I’ll never have to see your scrawny little face nor your dirty hole of an apartment ever again-” that’s when the curfew siren alarm rang. Rifter froze. “No.” He looked out the window, seeing the flashing red light that flooded the street. “Nonononononono.” Jenx glanced out the window into the street below them as well.

“Weird, they called curfew early. It’s probably to investigate Mexy’s murder.”

“FRICK,” Rifter practically screeched. “Why the heck do they not just publically announce this shiz??”

“Did you just say Frick, heck and shiz all in the same sentence?”

“Shut up! There is no way I’m spending the night here, it’s not happening.” Jenx gestured to the window.

“Trust me, I don’t want you to be here either but do you really have much of a choice?” Rifter let out a loud groan.

“Frick, just when I thought my night couldn’t get any worse!”