After seeing what I saw on the recordings of this pastor, I wanted to wash my eyes with soap. No, I wasn't a prude, and I accepted the existence of same-sex sex, and if he had it with adult men, I wouldn't have paid attention to it, but sex with young children was too much. And judging by Leah's reaction to what she saw, it was too much for the local civilization.

The local civilization was somewhat similar to ours in this matter, you can do what you want with the consent of adults and no one will say anything to you, but the fact that he was doing it with children was a completely different matter and we could not just leave it alone.

After leaving the house of this pervert, Leah sent anonymously the recordings from his communicator to the police and a well-known journalist who advocated for equality before the law. If we had reported that we had found only the police, the situation could have been hushed up, but we should not forget that the state is behind the church and they could have really hushed up the situation in order not to lose control over the parishioners of this pastor. The involvement of a scandalous journalist would not allow them to ignore the situation completely, and the government would have to do something to prevent them from being torn apart by a crowd of ordinary people.

On the way to the neighboring sleeping quarters, we noticed a police flyer accompanied by two police speeders flying toward the pastor's house. That's it, I doubt that this bastard will be able to continue doing his dirty deeds with children. Honestly, I wanted to do something more, it seemed that we had not done enough to avenge the children. But any actions could lead to us, and it was risky, we could be revenged both officially, we are wanted criminals after all, and unofficially, we shouldn't forget that the church is somewhere out there training a whole army for itself.

"Did you say that Mathieu was somehow connected to this?" I asked Leah when we returned to our room and watched the broadcast of the journalist who had come with the police to the pastor on the network. "Did he deliver children to this bastard?" If so, this would be enough to not only ruin his reputation, but perhaps even put him in jail.

"No, unfortunately not, but if he did, we could leak this fact and his ambitions would be over," Leah replied.

"Unfortunately? But it's fortunate," I disagreed with Leah. To be honest, I knew that there were pedophiles not only here but also on Earth, but I had never come across it so closely before and now I could hardly stop myself from doing something stupid. "But he's still connected to this, isn't he?" I asked Leah.

"Yes, and he's playing the role of a victim. Judging by the whole archive called Matthieu's name, it's a very old story," Leah answered, "It all started a month after Matthieu received a scholarship from the church. This bastard invited him to a private conversation where he persuaded him to have sex. Apparently, Mathieu became attached to his abuser and now he can't live without it, here's today's recording," Leah displayed on the hologram the moment when Mathieu and the pastor had sex right in the confessional room.

"If it's true, it could be good for his reputation," I replied to Leah, "a victim of a pedophile and all that. Is that all?

"Most of the recordings of their meetings are like that, but at the end of the meetings they talk about business for a few minutes. Here's a recording from a month ago," Leah added and brought up a recording of a naked Mathieu sitting on the pastor's lap and talking.

"Father, maybe we should slow down a bit? We're already starting to get questions about where people go after treatment," Mathieu said between kisses.

"We need to, you know, without their help, nothing would have happened."

"Then I need additional supplies of memresin."

"There should be a new shipment next week. Wait for it," the pastor replied, and then he pulled Mathieu off his lap and began to dress.

"Did you leave these recordings on his communicator?" I asked Leah about the pastor's communicator.

"I deleted it, in case they find traces of it being deleted, but that's as far as it goes," she added, "I wouldn't want the police to interfere with us either.

"What is memresin? There is no information on the Internet," I asked Leah.

"I hope you searched in anonymous mode?" Leah asked, and when I nodded to confirm this, she began to answer, "It's an alien technology for editing memories. You can change memories for a week into the depths of your memory. Because of this, I have a nanite complex fixing everything around me," Leah tapped her implants in her head, "Every second there is a comparison between what I perceive and what the nanite block fixes. This is not only insurance against memresin, but also against various technologies that distort perception.

"And has it ever helped?" I asked Leah. I was wondering how often you can encounter this in this world.

"To be honest," Leah was embarrassed, "I used it for other purposes. When I drink too much, I lose my memory, and thanks to this nanite complex, I recreated what was around me. That's how I knew that you didn't take advantage of me when I was hitting on you drunk." Leah smiled, "And once I was able to find out who stole all my money cards. It was my childhood friend who decided to take advantage of the situation."

"Such friends," I smiled, "As for memresin and Mathieu's words. I think it's a new direction to dig into.

"I think so too. Now I have gained access to the database of the clinic where Mathieu treats hopeless patients at his own expense and there are some inaccuracies. According to the data, before placing a person for treatment, he transferred five hundred thousand ksars to the clinic's account. In general, this is a normal price for the treatment of severe cases."

"What's wrong with that?" I asked Leah.

" Look at the third number, the seventeenth and twenty-fifth. Nothing strange?" Leah asked me.

"It's a standard payment from Urs to the clinic," I answered, trying to see what Leah had seen. "Wait, but there are no patients here, right?" I looked at Leah.

"Exactly, but according to the report on the use of medical cartridges for medical capsules, there was a patient." Leah added.

"Do you think the treatment was unsuccessful and Urs is hiding his death?" I asked her.

"I doubt it, it's almost impossible to die in a medical capsule," Leah answered. "We have to go to the clinic and find out."

"How shall we go? "I asked Leah.

"As patients. Look, in all three of these cases, the operator of the medical capsule was Aurora Kaits, and today is her day. "I'm going to break your arm, and we're going to..."

"Stop, you're not going to break anything," I stopped Leah, "I want to assess the likelihood of restoring my shoulder, and you can restore your eye. "

"Good idea," Leah admitted, although she was going to injure me a minute ago.

After we planned our next steps, we decided to rest and went to bed. But I couldn't sleep, unlike Leah, I still had images of that perverted bastard in my mind. Realizing that I really needed to rest before the new day, I had to get into the cabinet with various medicines in the room.

There were some medicines and drugs, all legal, in the local civilization, soft drugs produced by the state corporation were legal and many of the local population used them as a relaxation after work. Since I wasn't going to take drugs, I took a regular sleeping pill, judging by the description and instructions it was not narcotic, and that was enough for me to decide to take the pill.

In the morning, after a rather tasty breakfast from the alien food synthesizer in the hotel dining room, we went to the clinic where Mathieu treated the poor. On the way, Leah had made an appointment for us to see Dr. Aurora, so we didn't have to wait in line and went straight to her private patient room.

While I was talking to the doctor, Leah was hacking into her communicator and the computer in her office. Judging by her expression, she did not like what she saw. So after a few minutes she interrupted me and the doctor.

"We are actually private detectives and we were sent to investigate the disappearance of several people," Leah began to say, while Aurora froze for a few seconds, but quickly pulled herself together.

"Of course, I'll try to help you within the limits of the law. You know the law on confidentiality of patients' medical data," she smiled.

"The thing is that there are testimonies about how three patients were brought to you for an appointment only in the last month, but the registry has no records of these three patients." This is when Aurora started to get very nervous and it became clear that she had something to do with it.

" I think we should end our conversation here, I have an appointment now." She began to say, "And you can tell your fantasies to my lawyer."

"Very well, I think a public discussion of killing patients will be of interest to the public," Leah smiled. Meanwhile, Aurora was nervously pressing the security button, "Oh, did they tell you that they decided to dump everything on you? No one will come to your aid," Leah added, blocking the security call.

"It's not me, I'm just a medical pod operator, nothing more, and it wasn't murder, they were all alive when they were taken from the clinic," Aurora gave up almost instantly, "It was all Acudus and Zamvil, they're the ones who are doing something with Mathieu Urs, I'm just an operator."

"Tell me you had nothing to do with it," I smiled.

" I'll give it all back. I don't need anything, I didn't spend anything. All three hundred thousand credits are lying untouched." Aurora began to justify herself, "I couldn't refuse, if I refused, I would be fired and my memory would be erased. And I don't want to lose myself."

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" Now tell me in detail," Leah responded to her attempt to justify herself.

"There is nothing to tell. Several times a week we bring in poor people from the very bottom of society. We treat them at the expense of that bastard Urs, and that's it. "

" Are you sure that's all?" Leah asked.

" We conduct a standard alien test called the PMI, the physical and mental index. If the mental index is more than one hundred and forty points, then such people are taken somewhere. Everyone involved in the treatment or delivery of this person to the hospital is treated with memresin. Because memresin leads to the degradation of the intellectual index, they didn't touch me, because they needed a highly qualified operator of the medical capsule." Aurora began to tell in some detail, but it seems that something has come to her, "Wait, how could they have turned me in? I know a lot of ... No one has ever turned me in," she realized.

"You're right, and I think we should say goodbye," Leah replied, and going to the medicine cabinet, she quickly found something and while the shocked Aurora sat there motionless, she injected her with something and she almost instantly lost consciousness."

" What do you think?"

" I have a hunch. It's not the first time I've heard of people with a mental index of over one hundred and forty disappearing. There was an investigation in sector one hundred and twenty-three-nine. They found a criminal cartel that was supplying highly intelligent people to alien criminals." Leah answered. "We need to find a connection between Mathieu and the kidnappers, and that will be enough for our task. But without the help of the Clord, we will not be able to find the kidnappers, so we are going to meet with him," Leah added, after which we left the office where she had previously cleaned all electronic traces of our stay.

Clord surprisingly quickly agreed to meet with us, and two hours after Leah's call, his flyer arrived to pick us up. Twenty minutes later, we sat down in the small courtyard of his house. And it was not a block of apartments combined into a house, it was a full-fledged house with a yard where grass even grew. The difference with the house of the same pastor was huge.

"You have done a lot of work," Clord himself greeted us with a flyer and led us to his office on the second floor of the house. "Now the security services are on alert throughout the sector, and arrests of those involved in the Church of the One God have begun. It turned out that not only the pastor liked to play with children there.

"And what? Nobody knew about this?" I asked the Lord.

"As it turned out, some officials knew, but turned a blind eye to these games," Clord answered, "Something very strongly connects the military with the church. My people tried to find out something, but within an hour they were found with their memory wiped. Where did you get involved?"

" Honestly, I thought you knew about the military training camp after which children disappear," Leah replied to Clord and gave him the information. Judging by the way he looked at us, it was clear that he didn't know about it." It's strange, we only had to get access to the state segment of the network to find out. And knowing where to dig..."

"Shut up," the Clord interrupted her, and then called someone through the communicator, and a minute later a man with a military bearing entered the room, "Jagiel, did you find out anything about the pastor's connections with the military?"

"Unfortunately, no," Jagiel answered.

"I see," Clord squinted and somehow unnoticed pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Jagiel. The latter was not expecting it and looked at the Lord in surprise and a little frightened. "Do you know about the Mathieu Urs Foundation for Talented Youth?" Judging by the expression on Jagiel's face, he knew, he definitely knew. Suddenly, Leah pulled out a pistol and shot this Jagiel in the leg, and as it turned out, just in time.

"He wanted to activate the security system against the three of us in the office. In a moment, there would have been ashes instead of us," said Leah, approaching Jagiel, who was spinning in pain on the floor, clutching the stump of his leg.

" I didn't think it was that serious," Clord replied after checking the security system of the office, "I think we should leave this house, I have a privileged guest access level instead of zero, and you are just a guest. "

" Who was that?"

"The head of my personal security and my right hand man. I trusted him too much, I shouldn't have stopped double-checking him," the Clord hissed angrily and then took the communicator from his hand and smashed it against the table, "Do you have a place where you can hide me for a few days while my grandson is cleaning?"

"You don't trust even him?" I realized.

"Even him. It was he who recommended that I hire him as my personal assistant," the Clord replied and went to the wall of the office and opened a hidden safe, "There are two million credits here," he took out a stack of cards from the safe, "Each one has a hundred thousand credits. Access to the money is protected by a password that I will tell you in exactly three days," the Clord added and handed Leah the cards with the money, "These are personalized shield field generators." He took three backpacks out of the safe next, "They will protect you from several hundred shots from a blaster rifle, or from a single shot from an assault flyer." He ruined four more of them by entering a code. " Now change your toys for real weapons.

"These are the seventh generation of aliens, right?" Leah said in admiration.

"Unfortunately, only civilian weapons," replied the Clord, "Something more serious is in the office and we shouldn't go there right now. This bastard has managed to transmit a signal somewhere and we don't know what will happen next."

"How much time do we have?" I asked Clord.

"We have a few minutes, we have to go to the technical tunnels," said the Clord, "When I built this house, I doubted that I would need it, but I'm glad I did," he smiled evilly.

"And what about him?"

"Nothing," Leah answered, "He was able to activate the brain destruction. Nothing can be done without a seventh-generation medical capsule.

But it's strange, I thought that such implants were only for spies," and then she looked at Clord with a question.

"He was just that. More precisely, advanced intelligence," Clord replied. "What a bastard, I gave his daughter a house for her coming of age, and he betrayed me. "

"Do you know who he works for?"

" I have no idea. I'll let my grandson figure it out," the Clord replied and began to put on the generator.

Quickly putting on the protective field generators and changing weapons to blasters and some needle guns from the safe, we went down to the basement of the house in a minute and there, behind the bioreactor that processes waste, we went down to the technical tunnels. It seemed to me that life was going in a spiral, just a few days ago we were doing the same thing, only I was still carrying Leah, and here we are again. However, the situation was different now because we were not alone and we were all conscious, and unlike the walk from the clinic, this ten-meter tunnel simply led to the technical deck at a depth of three meters below the main deck.

It wasn't a specialized tunnel, it was a simple maintenance deck where hundreds and thousands of droids moved around to monitor the technical condition of the sector. It was quite interesting to watch them welding something not far from us, but we didn't have time to waste, so we moved to another sleeping block and closed the airtight door and went to the surface.

This sleeping block, unlike the neighboring one, was not elite, there were no separate houses at all, everything was filled with ordinary sleeping modules like in the same block where the pastor lived.

" I don't think they'll be looking for us here, but we should hurry," Leah said, "But before that, we have to do something," she added and went into a clothing store next door to us. Five minutes later she came out wearing a hoodie and two more hoodies."

"Churchgoers, a good cover," Clord smiled, apparently enjoying what was happening around him.

"I haven't seen many parishioners in church dressed like that," I looked at the hoodie with doubt, but put it on anyway.

" These are the orthodox, they have rejected civilian life for the sake of serving God. There are not many of them, but there are several hundred in each sector." Leah answered." Now let's go to the public transportation stop.

" Should we call a taxi?" Clord asked. He didn't want to ride in the same flyer as the commoners.

"All taxi flyers transmit the route and what's happening inside to the taxi service's database in real time. And orthodox people don't use taxis, they are for the minimum use of modern technology. "

"Then maybe we should walk?" I asked.

"That would be too much. Public transportation will be enough, they are not stupid enough to avoid such convenience. "Leah smiled and nodded at Clord, who definitely could not walk with us to the dump.

An hour later, with three transfers, we managed to get to the gateway to the Dump. Surprisingly, the military did not want to charge us and simply escorted us to the entrance to the dump. As soon as the airtight door of the gateway closed, Leah pulled off her hoodie.

We did the same right after her. The Clord was looking at the piles of technological garbage that had accumulated here over the past hundred years. Something interested him so much that he asked us to stop and wait for him. Running up to the pile of garbage, he threw away a few pieces of metal and picked something up, then returned to us, but judging by his expression, he did not find what he was looking for.

"I thought there was a 'Guardian' record player, it had a very distinctive shape, but it turned out to be a fake," he answered an unasked question and demonstrated the Guard emblem, which was almost half covered with oxide.

"What's in that record player?" Leah asked as we continued on our way.

"In my youth, before the war, they were given to people for thirty years of service in the Guard as a reward before they were retired. My father had one, but during the war a rocket hit our house and destroyed everything. It's a good thing my mother and father were in the shelter. " Clord replied nostalgically, "I know that Gurfald has an original record player like this, he bought it at an auction for fourteen million credits about ten years ago. And since then, he's been bragging about it every time we meet. " Clord hissed, "Upstart. But let's get back to our business. I assume it's safe here?"

"More or less. They don't come here from the outside, but there are local dangers. Outside the settlement, if you can't defend yourself, they'll gladly rob you. Only the fact that they see a lot of unfamiliar weapons on us stops them."

"Very well, then. Now tell me, why did you decide to meet with me today? I'm assuming it wasn't to tell me about Urs's ties to the military?"

"To be honest, we thought you were aware of those connections," Leah pressed on the sore spot, and Clord only grimaced at that. "So no, we wanted to tell you that we may have uncovered a channel for abducting people with high PMI by aliens and that Urs was involved.

"Interesting," Clord said, "Send me the information," the old man activated his new communicator.

"There's not much information.I read about something similar in another sector. Judging by the way they covered their tracks in the clinic, someone from the local criminal world is behind it. We wanted to get some contacts with whom we could talk to on the shadow side. "

" If Urs is actually involved in the theft of our intellectual potential, he'll be blown up. We already have a big problem with the fact that the level of intelligence is rapidly falling from generation to generation. There have even been studies of this effect."

"Isn't it the policy of dumbing down that is causing the level of intelligence to fall?" asked Lia.

"No, girl, it is not, it is the result of the fact that the average level of intelligence among young people is now thirty percent lower than it was right after the war. " Clord replied, "They don't talk about it publicly, but if you have an IQ over one hundred and twenty, you have access to any of the higher education institutions of Xarlex, and you are guaranteed a job with a very high salary. But the problem is that last year, for example, only sixteen boys and thirty-two girls had a PMI above one hundred and twenty out of the new generation that graduated from high school. And here you're talking about a hundred and forty." Clord thought, "the fact that you have found is enough to piss off the officials and Urs will be taken very seriously despite his cover in the military. And yes, I'll send the information to my friend right away. He is the patriarch of a clan in the lower town.

" Do you trust him?"

"Of course not," laughed the Clord, " but I have dirt on him that will bury him in no time. So for now, I can ask him for some favors. So I'll ask him to find out who's been sniffing around with the aliens. " He replied and stopped for a few minutes to send the information to his friend. " That's all, I have to disappear for the next two days," he smiled and turned off his communicator.