They’d gone to confession before leaving Vank but Test had been dispensing and hadn’t forced Retra to ingest the pod. Afterwards she’d dropped hers over the edge of the platform as they got on the kar. ‘You have to take it,’ Suki warned, as she swallowed a whole red bead. ‘They’ll know.’ ‘I don’t like them. They made me see things – visions.’ ‘What-kinda-visions?’ ‘Demons.’ Suki pulled a face. Then she giggled. ‘It-made-you-dance-all-sexy,’ she said. Retra noticed that most of the people in the kar were speaking in the same kind of high-pitched, jerky voices as Suki. Had she sounded the same? When the kar stopped, they piled out, pushing and shoving and mock-arguing. Retra searched the faces on the platform, looking for her brother, but she saw no one that could be him. She and Suki followed the crowd as they walked the lamp-lit path to Club Abraxas. Unlike the Drop, which they’d accessed from a bridge, the Club Abraxas entry was deep in the hillside.
