House of Dolls 5: A Superhero Thriller
Author: Harmon Cooper
Date: 2020-03-10 04:00:00+00:00
Description: Hate your job. Betray your country. Start all over. Tasked with killing the Eastern spy known as Nadine, as well as risking his life to get information by traveling to a foreign country, Roman develops an exit strategy with a lot of working parts, some of which he has absolutely no control over. Exploiting telepaths, tricking his companions, his government, and even his former teacher, Roman does everything within his power to bring his exit strategy to fruition. But he’s still being hunted by Margo, and once the Centralian Government learns of what he’s been up to, Roman’s enemies grow expone
Publisher: Boycott Books, LLC

House
of

Dolls V

By Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2020 by Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2020 Boycott Books

Edited by Allison Erin Wright

Audiobook by Tantor Media, Narrated by Neil Hellegers

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
Harmon Cooper’s Patreon

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Recap

This is the fifth book in the bestselling House of Dolls series, so if you’ve missed the first few, you can find the links here:

Book One: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls

Book Two: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls2

Book Three: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls3

Book Four: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls4

Child of Chaos (House of Dolls Prequel): https://geni.us/ChildofChaos

Continue for a recap of the fourth book.

(Contains spoilers!)

The world is known as Centralia, which is also the name of its largest country. Centralia is a heavily populated country, the center of all civilization, with buildings and development as far as the eye can see.

To the west is the aptly named Western Province, a once-popular but currently battle-torn country where proxy wars are fought. To the east is the Eastern Province, which is the poorest country in the world and the producer of the best technologies.

To the north is the Northern Alliance, a country located in the hottest region of the world and whose people are isolationists. To the south is the Southern Alliance, the coldest country in the world, rich in history but very exclusive and backward in many of their views.

Exemplars and non-exemplars make up the world of Centralia. Exemplars are people with known superpowers that have been classified, and each country has its own classification system. Non-exemplars have a propensity for superpowers, but they are half-powered at best. Non-exemplars are treated differently in some of the countries, most notably the Southern Alliance.

In the fourth book, Roman gets his powers back and finds out he’s related to Margo. He is told that charges will be brought against him unless he works to help the Centralian government kill his former co-worker Kevin Blackbook, who has escaped to the Western Province. Meanwhile, Nadine destroys Oscar’s safehouse by putting explosives in it, which are triggered by Eli, the boy healer. She also catches the attention of the Centralian government, which tells Roman to kill her once he’s done in the West. Margo is also still alive and, while killing her former teammate Orange, she learns that Roman is her half-brother.

Now, start reading!

-Harmon Cooper

Prologue: Progress Report

“I’m still working on it,” Nadine told Lydia, her new handler. “Some things have come up. Namely, the Centralian government.”

Lydia took a sip of her tea. “Their streamlined removal program?”

Nadine nodded. “Are you aware of this or something?”

“I am.”

“Yet you call me out into the open?” Nadine asked, trying not to glare at the younger woman.

They were in a different trolley station at yet another tea shop, a typical meeting location for her handler. The place was semi-secluded; no one there aside from a waiter.

Even though they were in a booth in the back, it was still way too visible of a place for Nadine to be.

Especially at the station.

Nadine had been forced to walk through the food section just as a trolley arrived and more people spilled out into the space. Not at all ideal.

“It’s good to get fresh air,” Lydia said as she took a deep breath through her nostrils, “and I wanted to get an update from you directly on your project. I thought it would be more personal that way.”

Nadine tried not to scoff at her remark. “I believe Eli and Lisa may have headed to the southern border. I was able to locate a hostel they stayed at, and one of the employees there said he overheard them talking about going to the South. That’s about all the information I have. It will be impossible to track them without additional resources.”

Lydia’s brow furrowed. “What kind of resources would those be?”

“For one, a passport to go to the Southern Alliance. That would be helpful. Funding, perhaps a telepath to check common Centralian communication channels, that sort of thing.”

“So you want money, a passport, and a telepath?”

“Among other things, yes,” Nadine told Lydia, trying to keep the edge off her voice. She had much bigger concerns now that she was being hunted, and for her handler to put her thumb on her like this—to have the gall to bring her out in public, no less—only made things worse.

And Lydia was just getting started.

“I have a theory, if you’ll bear with me. Let’s say, based on your files, that you have become somewhat of a rogue agent. Just follow me here. That term doesn’t completely describe you, I know, but we will use that word for now. Rogue agent. Anyway, going along with my theory, you would have decided that the will of the Eastern Province government didn’t align with your own aspirations, so you used your cunning to make things easier for the people you care about.”

“Excuse me?” Nadine asked.

“Just follow along. I’m sure you can comprehend this. While you originally went to our country in search of the healer, Eli, once you found him and it became clear to you that our government would have to exploit his powers for the good of humanity, exemplar and non-exemplar alike, this bothered you. You were never able to have a child, correct?”

“What’s your point?”

“And you never will be able to have one. You took a liking to Eli, so you devised a way to free him by exploiting his power.”

“Come again?”

“Stop playing coy with me. The number of explosives that went off in Oscar’s home would tell me someone was planning to entirely demolish the place and knew the perfect catalyst. This is just me thinking out loud here. I’m not accusing you of doing this, I’m just saying it could be a scenario. There are plenty of other similar scenarios. But if this is the scenario that’s closest to the truth, if this is more or less how things happened, then it would be safe to say you know where Eli is, and through an extension of that, you know where Lisa Painstake is as well.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nadine bit her lip and instantly felt the clawing hand of a telepath at the back of her skull. “Is this a setup?” she asked, resisting the telepathic creep.

“No.”

“Do you have a telepath hidden around here?”

“Our waiter is a telepath,” Lydia said, nodding to the kitchen on the other side of the tea shop. “To be fair, I knew this wouldn’t work on a seasoned operative like you, but at least I can put in the file I’m producing that I tried to do things the easy way. You know how they are back home. They expect us to exhaust all options. So we tried a telepath, but you were too strong. That’s fine. To be expected. This is the last thing I’ll say about this, and then I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

“Okay.”

“I have something else I’d like to talk about, to show you as well.”

“Okay.”

“But before I do… Right now, I am the only person that can truly elaborate on this little theory I have about Oscar’s death and Eli and Lisa’s disappearance, this theory of you being a rogue agent. As I’m sure you can already imagine, I can certainly connect all the dots. But I don’t want to. I would prefer you return Eli and Lisa to our custody. I don’t care about Oscar’s death, and I don’t care how you have to do it, but we need Eli and Lisa. Up until recently, you have been a dedicated agent, which has netted you many supporters. That could all change. And I would like for it not to change. We all make mistakes, even a more seasoned agent like yourself.”

Nadine forced a smile.

“Deliver Eli and Lisa to me. Now, moving on. I wanted to show you something.”

The waiter came forward, wearing a cummerbund and a white bowtie. He placed a couple forks on the table and quickly stepped away.

By this point, Lydia had taken a square box from her briefcase. She set the box on the table and opened it, revealing a necklace with a red gem on it.

“What is it?”

Nadine had only seen something like this in a laboratory back East. Generally, these were hooked up to larger power sources, and from what she knew, they were used for telepathic means.

“I thought I would demonstrate something to you, yet another thing our higher-ups have attributed to your excellent service. Without you, we wouldn’t have this.”

Lydia placed the necklace on, the gemstone flashing after she touched it twice.

“It allows you to practice telepathy?”

“Hardly,” Lydia said as she lowered her hand over one of the forks.

It began to bend, and then the fork split in two.

“No…” Nadine said, her eyes wide now. She had seen Roman do something like this before. “That quick? They did this that quickly?”

Lydia waved her hand over another fork, which flipped up and rolled toward the wall of their booth.

It splashed into it like paint, metal dripping down under the table.

“It’s a prototype,” Nadine’s handler finally said, a smile on her face. “But I thought it was something you would like to see. If you can bring Eli and Lisa to me, I will see to it that you not only get rewarded for your discovery, but you also get one of these.”

There was a flash at the far end of the tea shop as an enormous fireball erupted into the air, cracking into the booth behind them.

Nadine dove out of the booth.

She activated her Zero Ring just as a teleporter appeared in front of her, a scrawny man she immediately brought to the ground who yelled in shock once he realized he couldn’t use his power.

She punched him twice in the face, covering her knuckles in blood, before the telepath tried to raise his wrist guard and shoot her.

His shot just barely passed over her right shoulder.

The telepathic waiter ran by screaming, his entire body on fire as he tripped over a table and faceplanted in the center of the restaurant.

Nadine went for her attacker’s wrist with both hands and slammed it to the ground. She elbowed him in the side of the face, eventually scooting her knee up to put pressure on his neck as she unstrapped his weapon.

She quickly turned the wrist guard on him, shooting the man twice in the chest.

A table caught fire next to her; Nadine looked up to see what was clearly a Type II Class C fire user, his hands engulfed in flames.

Another fireball nearly reached her as she rolled to the side, suddenly realizing her assailants were wearing Centralian uniforms.

She knew then that it was a unit meant to kill her; that there would be more coming if she didn’t hurry.

With this in mind, Nadine knocked the table over and got behind it. Flames rose on the other side of the table, the inferno reaching the ceiling before settling.

She glanced to her left to see that Lydia had tried to slip under the table but had apparently smacked her chin in the process, the woman now on the ground trying to recover.

Nadine heard heavy footsteps coming her way.

She jumped up just in time to fire her wrist guard at a woman with scaled arms and legs, organic armor made of a thick material that absorbed her attack.

The woman dove toward her. Nadine couldn’t get out of the way as she was tackled, both of them slamming through another table as the woman scrambled to the top. Her power was immediately taken away by the Zero Ring even as Nadine’s breath was knocked out.

The woman gasped; Nadine responded with a blast of her wrist guard that took a section of the woman’s head off.

Blood spritzed into the air as portions of her skull were disintegrated by another shot, the blast striking the roof as well and causing a support beam to land in some of the flames licking off the carpet.

Still straddling Nadine, the woman blinked for a moment and slowly reached her hand to her head, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

Nadine fired another shot through her attacker’s chest.

She pushed the woman off her, again staying low as she avoided an incoming fireball from the exemplar on the other side of the room.

Diving for cover in the form of an overturned table, Nadine returned fire, her shots going a bit wide because of the smoke.

With the realization that she wasn’t going to be able to hit the fire user, she focused on what was above him—another support beam.

She blasted it with her wrist guard, a part of the ceiling giving way and falling on top of him.

The exemplar managed to get out of the way, but in doing so he lost his balance and fell into another table.

The telepath who had been working with Lydia finally ran out of the kitchen, ready to help.

In response, Nadine shot the telepath in the face before making her way over to the fire user, who was just pressing himself up, flames still lifting off his forearms. She shot him twice in the side, the man gasping as he hit the floor.

With a deep breath out, Nadine checked the power supply on her wrist guard to see she still had plenty of juice. As the man started to turn over, she delivered a lethal shot that split his head in two.

The plumes around her started to grow; Nadine knew she was within a minute of more people showing up.

She moved over to Lydia, crouching before her young handler.

“Are you okay?” she whispered.

“Nadine?” Lydia looked up at her, a dazed look on her face and fire dancing across her pupils.

Nadine’s focus fell upon Lydia’s necklace, the jewel also reflecting some of the flames.

“You had it coming,” Nadine said as she raised her wrist guard, killing her handler with a single shot to the head.

She retrieved the bloody necklace, put it in its case, and grabbed Lydia’s briefcase as well.

Her only option being to exit through the kitchen, Nadine ran to the other side of the restaurant as the flames lifted higher and higher. She got to the end of the room, turned, and began firing at anything flammable—curtains, tablecloths, more of the support beams. Anything.

Nadine took off the wrist guard and tossed it as far she could.

After shouldering through a sliding door, she ran to the back of the kitchen and found an emergency exit.

The exit door opened; Nadine was gone.

Chapter One: Dinner Date

Emelia ran her hand through her light gray hair, her violet eyes lowering to Roman as he took a seat before her.

“Always this place, huh?”

“You followed orders for once,” Emelia said.

Roman shrugged. “You asked for me to come alone, so I did.”

“I see…” she said, playfully double-checking to make sure that Celia or Coma wasn’t hiding behind Roman.

Roman felt something inside his skull. “Stop. No need to pry. I will explain everything. More than I’ve told you previously, I promise you that.”

The waitress stopped in front of the table, an unopened bottle already in her hands. “Will the two of you be having any wine?”

“I believe so,” Emelia told her. “Please wait until after we’ve finished the bottle to bring food.”

Once the glasses of wine were poured and the waitress was gone, Roman started from the beginning, even though Emelia already knew some of the details. He explained how he’d gotten his power back, how he’d been asked to join the Centralian Intelligence Agency, how his power hadn’t come naturally to him and how it had been forced into him by Ava’s sister.

His voice dropping, he admitted that Margo was back. Emelia gasped at this revelation, but Roman didn’t give her a moment to jump in with a question.

He told her how he had been sent to the West to kill a former coworker named Kevin, how he had mixed feelings about what they were doing and what the Centralian government had been doing as a whole with their streamlined removal program.

He told her about Miranda, the blue-haired telepath, and Jess, who could morph her body into inanimate objects. Roman then went into detail about the party Kevin had hosted and how they had used the distraction as an opportunity to attack. As he sipped his wine, Roman admitted he had disobeyed orders by engaging exemplars at the party when he was supposed to have been operating on the periphery.

Kevin had escaped, but Roman had sent his tiniest doll forward. Casper had hidden in Kevin’s things and savagely killed Kevin and his assistant in a hotel room before Roman and the other operatives could show up.

Speaking of Casper, Roman backtracked a bit to explain why he had been placed on the periphery for the final fight and how Ava had discovered through Casper that Roman had gone to the East in search of Eli and had traded his own power to save Nadine, Lisa Painstake, and the boy healer.

“At that point—I mean, after we got Kevin—I thought they were going to do something like strip away my power, or remove me.”

“I see,” Emelia said, now halfway through her second glass of wine.

“Then I go back to the agency and have a meeting with the guy who’s in charge of my little group, a guy named Rafner. I mentioned it to him earlier. He tells me my transgressions will be expunged from my record if I’m able to do three things, all related.”

“An ultimatum,” Emelia said. “And those things are?”

“For one, I have to find Eli,” Roman finished his first glass of wine and Emelia quickly filled it.

“You never mentioned what happened to him,” she said once she was done.

“Sorry, it’s kind of a convoluted story. The safe house he was living in, where the Eastern Province government was experimenting on him, blew up mysteriously. He escaped.”

“An explosion at a covert safe house? That doesn’t sound so mysterious.”

“No, it doesn’t. Luckily, Nadine made sure Eli and Lisa got away safely. I even forged passports for them.”

“Centralian passports?”

“That’s right. The agency wants me to go after those two, Eli in particular. They don’t care as much about Lisa; while her Soul Speed power is unique, there are others who can do similar things. Our government wants the healer. So that’s the first part.” Roman took a sip of his wine and shook his head. “The second part is they want me to kill Nadine, whom I consider a friend.”

“Anything more than a friend?”

Roman felt that telepathic creep again, a frown taking shape on his face. “I asked you not to do that. I’m telling you everything, just give me a chance.”

“But it’s fun to jump ahead,” Emelia said with a playful pout.

Roman canceled his next thought, that he could feel her flirting with him. Emelia always flirted with him, and he was pretty sure something could happen between them if he so desired.

And there was a part of Roman that wouldn’t mind giving in to that desire.

Emelia was a beautiful woman, the colors of her hair and eyes making her seem mysterious, forbidden in a way. She had a tight body, and Roman had an itching feeling that she would be great in bed.

But he also actively avoided hooking up with telepaths, and even though she was an empath, she had some telepathic tendencies.

So no.

Definitely no.

Out of the question.

“I care about Nadine,” Roman said after a long sigh. “We have been through a lot together, and there were plenty of times she could have betrayed me. But she never did. She’s always had my back. If it weren’t for her…”

A memory flashed in Roman’s head of his battle against Margo, when Mister Fist’s team had shown up and Nadine had fought off a team of exemplars to save Roman.

She had balls.

Roman couldn’t help but smile when thinking of Nadine. His smile shattered when he remembered he was supposed to kill her.

“Is there another part?”

Roman nodded. “Yeah, sorry. The first part is to find Eli, the second part is to kill Nadine, and the third part is to prevent the usage and spread of whatever the East has created through the dissecting of my power. I’d assumed this would have me going to the Eastern Province, which was confirmed when I found a set of passports and travel documents in the apartment they provided me.”

“The first task sounds doable; the second sounds like it will be a personal struggle; but the third sounds practically impossible. Who knows what they’ve done with whatever technology their techs have derived from your ability.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“And how are you supposed to simply prevent this?”

“I guess ‘prevent’ isn’t the correct word. I was told that I need to find out as much as I can about what they’ve done with the data collected from my power. I just assumed that went along with doing whatever I could to stop it.”

Emelia held her wine glass out for a moment, swirling the liquid inside. “That sounds more doable. It seems, if I may, that all roads lead to Nadine.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’ll know what they’ve done with your power, and if anyone knows where Eli and Lisa are, it will be her. Is she still in communication with you?”

“Yes. She wants to meet, or at least I’m assuming she does. She already sent me a message today, but I ignored it. For all she knows, I’m still away.”

“What do you want?” Emelia asked suddenly, tilting her head as she looked at Roman. “What does Roman want? I think that’s one thing that needs to be discussed here.”

“Me?” Roman considered this for a moment. “I guess I want to be left alone. I don’t mind working for the government, but I don’t want to be used as an assassin. I would like to be trained better, because I feel like I’m lacking, especially when it comes to intelligence gathering. I would like to not be asked to kill someone I care about. And there’s another thing I want.”

“What’s that?”

“I want Margo. She is still around, still trying to get to me, and I want to put an end to that.”

“That’s curious. They didn’t task you with finding or killing Margo, did they?”

Roman shook his head. “They didn’t. And I wish they had. From what I can tell, they may have other ideas of what they should do with Margo, but that sounds incredibly foolish to me. There is no controlling her, and she’s damn hard to kill.”

The waitress came by again and asked if they would like another bottle of wine. Rather than say anything, Emelia simply looked at the woman. The waitress nodded and walked away. Emelia’s voice softened. “I’m about to give you some advice here that might not be the best advice a friend could give another friend.” The empath’s eyes darted left and right. “There might be a point in the future when you look back at this conversation and wish I hadn’t said what I’m about to say.”

“Yeah?”

Emelia paused for a moment, composing herself. Her cheeks were a bit red from the alcohol now, her violet eyes just a little glossier than they had been thirty minutes ago. “It seems to me that everyone wants you to do something for them, and they keep dangling carrots over your head that will theoretically forgive you of a past transgression. This sound about right?”

“It does.”

“But you don’t know if they’ll actually forgive you or not, do you? Didn’t you go to the West for this very same reason? Didn’t they dangle the same redemption?”

“They did. But then more information…”

“It doesn’t matter. This will likely be how they treat you for the rest of your life. Can’t you see that? It’s always going to be something, and the reward is going to be your continued existence. I have a similar situation, although with less at stake. So the way I see it, you have a few choices. Your first choice is to fall in line and do exactly what they ask of you. You will work with their operatives, find Eli, kill Nadine, and discover what you can about what the East has done with your power. That’s option number one.”

“And the others?”

“Another option would be to do exactly what you want, what’s best for Roman, and perhaps use your powers to get to a place where they can’t find you,” she said as the waitress brought over another bottle of wine. The woman filled Emelia’s glass with what was left of the first bottle and left quickly. “Margo has been able to elude capture this entire time. Why can’t you?”

“Maybe you’re right,” Roman said as he finished his second glass of wine. Or was it his third? He couldn’t remember now, and he definitely recalled Emelia topping him off at some point.

“There’s another option.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s always the option of going out with a bang.”

“Going out with a bang?”

She nodded. “Show up at the Centralian Intelligence Agency and bring the place to the ground. Kill yourself in the process, because you know they’ll do terrible things to you if they take you alive.”

“Are you suggesting a suicide mission?”

“Those are just three options off the top of my head. Now, obviously, there’s one that I don’t agree with, the third one. I definitely don’t want you to do something like that; I’m just pointing out that it’s an option. I don’t know what good it will do killing innocent exemplars, even if they do work for the agency. There are always people waiting in line to take their places, so it’s not like it would cause anarchy or anything. But it is always an option, especially with your ability.” She sighed, again swirling her wine. “There may be another option, one in which you play all the sides against one another,” she said as she watched the liquid in the glass, “but I’m not at the point where I can figure out the angle on that one. Not yet anyway. But it’s something you should think about.”

Roman raised his wine glass. “Decisions.”

“Yes, decisions,” Emelia said, raising her wine glass to meet his.

Chapter Two: Fiery

Emelia tried to smile, but Roman could tell she was disappointed.

“Next time,” he told her, inching away from the beautiful empath.

“I know, it’s stupid…”

A gust of wind picked up, rustling through the ends of her light-pink trench coat.

“It isn’t stupid; I’ve just never been into cosplay cafes. I’ve tried. They just aren’t my thing.”

“But with my powers…” She stopped herself, the empath sulking a bit. “I can make it fun. I could make you forget your current problems.”

“That…” Roman nodded. “That doesn’t actually sound like a bad idea. How about next time we have drinks? We can go then. Sound good?”

“Why do I get the feeling you’ll just blow me off again?”

Roman tried not to visibly wince and failed. She wasn’t wrong in this assumption.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll get a teleporter.”

“I can walk you…”

“Twenty blocks? No. It’s fine. Roman, you be you.” She turned to him, her smile starting to crack.

“I appreciate your advice,” he told her as a wisp of smoke lifted from the pavement.

A licensed teleporter appeared from the smoke, a man with droopy eyes and a hooked nose.

“Bye, Roman.”

Still with a grimace on his face, Roman ordered his own teleporter. The ground in front of him started to rumble. Roman watched it, expecting the teleporter to appear.

“Behind you,” came a woman’s voice.

Roman turned to find yet another licensed teleporter, this one with her shirt pulled into a knot just above her behind. “It’s part of my power,” she said once Roman looked back at the place where the ground had been rumbling.

“Sure.”

The woman reached out to him. “Well? Are you coming?”

“How?”

She looked down at her extended hand. Roman scratched the back of his head for a moment.

He was drunk, definitely drunk.

“Sorry,” Roman said, touching her hand.

Everything started to shake, Roman immediately feeling it in his gut. His body vibrated so quickly he could no longer make out the details around him, his periphery a blur of light and color.

“Ugh,” Roman said once things started to solidify. He was in front of his new apartment, the doorman standing by the entrance staring at him intently.

“You’ll be all right,” the teleporter said before clapping Roman on the back.

The ground quaked again and she was gone.

Roman bent over, his hands on his knees as he tried not to throw up.

“Are you all right, sir?” the doorman asked.

He was a big man, clearly a Type II Class C employed by the Centralian Intelligence Agency to watch the building. While the fifteen-story apartment building looked innocuous on the outside, it was exclusively used by the government, with security stations on each level.

“I… I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Roman spit, and some of it dripped down to his chin. “I wish teleporters came with a warning.”

The man chuckled. “You and me both, buddy. By the way, you have a visitor,” he said, offering Roman a tissue.

“Thanks. Wait, did you say visitor?”

“Yes. A woman. She had the proper ID, so I let her up.”

“Do you recall what she looked like?”

The doorman considered this for a moment. “She told me not to tell you.”

Roman stood and placed the tissue in his back pocket. “And you said she had ID?” he asked, immediately thinking of Margo.

“Yes, and it all checked out. No need to worry, Mr. Martin.”

Roman gave the doorman a hard look. “You don’t know the type of people that want me dead; you don’t know what they’re capable of.”

The big man cleared his throat. “She was vetted by our telepathic service as well.”

“There’s a telepathic service here?” Roman asked, looking up at the building.

“Before the outer door can open, people are remotely vetted by a telepath.”

“Good to know.”

“Look, Mr. Martin, I’d tell you, but she made me promise not to.”

“It’s fine,” Roman said as he made his way into the building. “I’ll take my chances.”

Roman stepped into the elevator, wondering as he looked around how he’d been remotely vetted. There wasn’t anything to indicate he was being watched, but that didn’t mean the Centralian government wasn’t keeping an eye on him.

As the elevator reached his floor, Roman braced himself, taking in his surroundings and seeing what he could potentially use as a weapon. There were only two rooms on his floor, and as he made it to his door, he thought about giving consciousness to the wall so he could get an idea of what was on the other side.

Roman canceled this thought.

Coma, Celia, and Casper were in his home, all of them animated.

If something had happened, he’d know about it.

Even though his nerves were tingling, Roman unlocked the door and opened it to the foyer.

“He’s home,” Casper said as she came running down the hallway. “Your teacher is here, and she’s being a drunk bitch.”

“I’m going to melt you alive!” Roman heard Ava call from the other room.

“Of course,” he said under his breath as he dropped to a knee and Casper made a running leap onto his leg. She scaled her way up until he offered her his hand, the tiny doll cursing at Roman for not being more of a gentleman.

“What did you tell her?” he hissed to Casper.

“I didn’t tell her anything, promise,” Casper said. “I learned my lesson last time.”

“Good.” Roman took the tiny doll’s life away and placed her on the table near the door. He stepped into his living room to find Ava resting on the couch, an unopened bottle of wine on the table. Coma sat in the chair across from her, poised and ready to go if need be.

“Welcome home, Roman,” Celia said from the kitchen. She came around with two wine glasses in her hands.

“Thank you,” he told the redheaded doll. “Please take a seat.”

Celia placed the glasses on the table and did as instructed, first sitting at the bar.

“A different chair, please,” he told her, not yet paying attention to Ava. Celia sat next to Coma, and once she was settled, Roman took the power away from all his dolls.

“Good, they were starting to annoy me,” Ava said, her face red, the fire user slurring her words a bit.

“You showed up drunk?”

She smirked. “Not drunk enough yet.” Her eyes dropped to the bottle. “Care to do the honors?”

The cork squeezed out of the bottle on its own accord.

Roman poured Ava a glass, then poured a glass for himself.

She raised her wine glass to his. “Have you been drinking too?”

“I have,” he told her as he took a seat next to her.

“With who?”

“Alone.”

“Why do you lie? Were you out with Miranda?”

Roman gave her a funny look. “Miranda the telepath?”

“Do you know another Miranda?”

“No, and I’m not into telepaths.”

“She seemed to be into you,” Ava said with a jealous shrug.

“I didn’t notice,” Roman lied. “Why are you here?”

“Is that really how you want to ask me that question?”

“Is there another way to ask it?” Roman noticed that an extra button on her blouse was undone, a swath of her flesh visible.

“I thought you could use the company.”

“I already have company.”

Ava took a deep breath in and finished the wine in her glass. “Relax, Roman. It’s me you’re talking to.”

“I know. You could have messaged me.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Why?”

“Why not? There aren’t enough surprises in life,” she said.

“I could argue differently.”

“Let’s not argue.”

“I agree with you there.” He took a sip of his wine. It was good stuff; Roman was no connoisseur, but he could tell by the crispness that it wasn’t the cheaper crap he normally drank.

“I…” Ava poured herself another glass. “I was feeling lonely.”

“Sometimes that’s a good thing,” Roman said. “Sorry, you just got me riled up. I didn’t know who to expect. I thought it was…”

“Miranda?”

“What? Why do you keep bringing her up? No, Margo. I thought she’d figured out I was here and she’d be waiting for me.”

“If Margo comes here, every exemplar employed by the Agency will be here in a matter of minutes. This apartment is secure.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Ava scooted closer to Roman.

He could sense in the air that she wanted him, that there had been a shared tension between them ever since she’d come back into his life. But he was troubled by what he’d seen of Ava in the Western Province, how quickly she’d changed her focus to the serums Kevin had while Jess was injured.

Roman didn’t have a lot of scruples, but something in that moment had made him despise Ava, even if Jess wasn’t exactly a friend of his.

“It was hard, that month we didn’t talk,” she admitted. “But I was upset, and something I learned long ago about myself is that when I’m upset, I need my space. It’s my power. It can feed off my anger, so I have to be careful.”

“It was a much harder month for me than it was for you,” Roman said bitterly. “Imagine having your power taken away…”

“Really? You’re going with this argument again? I’m sitting here confessing to you…”

“It was a shitty month for me too,” Roman said, cutting her off.

“At least you have your power back now.”

“Yeah, no thanks to me.”

“You should be thankful,” she said, her body tensing.

“Sure, it beats working at the bodega. Now I’m a fucking government assassin.”

“You’ve been given another chance,” Ava said, so agitated now that the stem of her wine glass started to melt. She took it by the bowl and quickly finished it, setting what was left of the glass on the table. “I need a new wine glass.”

“You know where to get them,” Roman said, feeling mean now, feeling like he needed to say some things.

Ava stood, her arms crossed over her chest. She walked to the kitchen and stopped just before she reached the bar. She turned back to Roman. “This could be a lot simpler, you know.”

“Which part?”

“All of this. If you’d just do what you’re told, you wouldn’t be in this situation. This whole situation is because of you.”

“You try having some psycho bitch animate your dead spouse’s body and see what it does to you,” Roman said, getting to his feet. “Let’s see if you just follow orders!”

“Orders are there for a reason! They keep… they make…” Ava’s hair flared up. “They are why this country works and the other countries are shit. We have order. We have laws.”

“The government has a different law than the people,” Roman said. “If that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t be assigned to ‘removing’ a friend of mine.”

“You mean the Eastern spy? She’s a friend now? You never thought she tricked you into traveling to the East with her so she could have her country try to crack your power? That seriously never crossed your fucking mind?”

“What? That’s not what happened. She had to risk everything herself too!”

“So you care about her then?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course…” Roman chose his next words carefully, especially now that Ava’s hands were rimmed in fire, the heat already reaching his face. “I care about all of my friends.”

“But not me—not someone who’s been there since the start.”

Roman almost said that Nadine had been there from the start too but stopped himself just in time.

Ava was the most unstable he’d seen her, a drunken, fiery mess. It wouldn’t take much more to push her over the top, and while he could control fire as well, he knew he’d be in for one hell of a fight.

“Let’s not do this,” he said, sitting back down. “Sorry.”

“I came over here…” Ava swallowed hard. As she did, a fiery tear fell down her cheek. It reached her chin and she wiped it away. “Fuck, Roman. Fuck.”

“You came to fuck?”

Ava gave him a funny look, which was interrupted by a hiccup that sent a small fireball across the room.

“Shit!” she cried, covering her hand with her mouth. Roman quickly took control of the fireball, sending it to the kitchen sink and turning the water on.

There was a dark spot on the wall where it had hit, something Celia would most certainly notice.

“I don’t have to pay for repairs or anything, do I?”

Ava started to laugh. It was angry laughter, but Roman had finally broken through.

“I’m… sorry for showing up like this. Shit. I’m too drunk to call a teleporter. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“The floor?” Roman moved over to her, Ava stumbling as soon as he reached her. He helped her stand, and he could tell by the way she was puckering her lips at him that she wanted to kiss him.

But it also felt wrong. And even if he’d been attracted to her before, Roman really didn’t know where he stood with her now.

“I’ll sleep on the couch; you take my bed.”

“No, we take your bed.”

“Ava.”

“Roman, I want someone to goddamn hold me tonight.” She started to sob again. “It’s been a fucked last couple of days. I need someone right now.”

Ava glanced at him, a fire igniting behind her eyes.

“Sure,” he finally said.

“I’m sorry.”

“My sister…” she said, more fiery tears sliding down her cheeks.

“I know,” Roman told her as he tried to avoid her tears.

“She wanted you to have your power back, for you to be happy.”

Roman shook his head.

He had a feeling there was more to this than what Ava had just said, especially since his power was something their government wanted to exploit. But he didn’t say anything to correct her; he simply guided her to his bedroom, where he asked her to wipe her fire tears away.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.

“Let’s just relax. Let me hold you.”

“Yes…”

He lay down on the bed, Ava cuddling up next to him. Roman hesitated for a moment before placing his face near the back of her head.

“I’m sorry for all this,” she whispered.

“So am I.”

Chapter Three: Glass Houses

“I am not a super-powered individual. I am not an exemplar. I have never had a superpower. I am not a hero, nor will I ever be a hero. I am not a superhero. I am half-powered. I will always be half-powered. I am a non-exemplar. There is nothing about me that is extraordinary. I am not a hero. I am not a superhero. I am half-powered. I will always be half-powered. I am a non-exemplar.”

Roman Martin recited the words by heart, watching as a man with bandages cascading up his arms took the podium.

Once everyone was finished with the H-Anon mantra, the man started explaining how he had tried to convince some neighbors that he was an elementalist and ended up catching himself on fire, accidentally burning down an entire city block.

At first his voice was clear, but then Roman couldn’t make out what the man was saying, like he was mumbling or something.

As Roman stared up at the podium, his focus turned to Bill, the leader of Heroes Anonymous. The huge non-exemplar had a stern look on his face, his muscular arms crossed in front of his chest.

Something caught Roman’s eye, and he glanced up to see that the ceiling above them was missing. It had been replaced with a darkened sky, stars twinkling, a purple rainbow twisting toward him.

After a sudden flash, Roman stood in an empty field surrounded by hills, tall grass blowing in the breeze, the dreamwalker known as Abby slowly floating down to him.

“I thought there was something wrong about all this,” Roman said as he took in the masculine-looking woman. Her short brown hair was parted as usual, and she wore a bow tie that matched her high-waisted slacks.

Abby’s hazel eyes softened as she looked him over. “You seem distracted.”

“Do I always seem that way?”

“Sometimes you seem horny.”

“Also accurate, but less lately. I’ve been trying to get my act together.”

“And the forces have been closing in on you, haven’t they?”

“You can read my thoughts. You tell me.”

“I try to stay away from thoughts, especially yours, and I can’t read them in the way you think I can,” Abby reminded him. “I thought you might like to see Celia. Would you like that?”

“Of course I would like that,” Roman started to say, “but… not this time. I’ve got too much going on to be distracted by my past. Does that make sense? I haven’t moved on, but I’m trying to. I’m really trying to do something different here.”

“Closure can be helpful, but it can also be incredibly painful.”

“I am glad you came, though. I was wondering how I would reach out to you.”

A purple rose lifted from the ground, its petals wilting and hardening as it formed into a seat. Abby sat down and crossed one leg over the other.

“They want me to go after Nadine,” Roman told her when she didn’t say anything. “And by ‘go after,’ I mean they want me to kill her. I need to get a message to her.”

“That is something I’m capable of,” Abby said. “What would you like me to tell her?”

Abby merely nodded as he relayed his message to Nadine, as if she had expected Roman to say this the entire time.

“You know I can trap you in here, right?” she asked after Roman had finished.

“Trap me? Why are you telling me that?”

Before the words had left Roman’s lips, the ground began to change as he took control of the environment. And for a moment he felt powerful, like he could do anything he wanted. But then everything flattened, Abby taking to the air as Roman noticed his form starting to shrink. “Remember, I am in control here.”

“I remember…” he said with disdain.

“The reason I mention trapping you here is so you don’t have to face what happens out there. I’ve done this before, and it is something I wouldn’t mind doing for you. You would be alive here as long as I am alive.”

“You told me this before,” Roman said. “I wasn’t ready then, and I’m not ready now.”

“Just remember it’s an option. As long as you can dream, I can make your dreams come true.” Abby chuckled. “I love saying that last part.”

Roman started to shrink, the environment around him swelling and then becoming beautiful again. Tall grass grew as flowers bloomed along the hills that surrounded the meadow. “Thanks for visiting me. I still don’t know much about you, but if you ever…”

“We have met once in person,” she said, interpreting his thoughts, “and that will be the only time we meet. You wouldn’t be able to find me in Centralia, even if you had your colleagues join you in the search. I exist when and where I want to exist.”

“Okay,” Roman said. “Please pass the message along to Nadine then, and thanks.”

“I will. And Roman…”

“Yes?”

Abby smiled. “Lighten up a bit. The end is in sight, and while it will be difficult, I believe things will work out in your favor. If not, I’m always here.”

“Thanks.”

Roman awoke with a gasp, his heart thrumming in his chest.

He was in his bedroom, Ava next to him, his teacher naked aside from a pair of panties.

It took him a moment to remember why she was there, how she had shown up drunk and nearly burnt his place down.

He also remembered how he felt about who she really was.

But looking at her nude body, Roman had to wonder if she shouldn’t be judging him for who he really was. Or perhaps she already had. Perhaps he was overanalyzing all of this.

He sat up, not sure how he should interpret any of this, a morning haze coming over his mind.

Roman ran his hand through his white hair and looked over his former teacher through the exit of his bedroom to his living room, where his dolls were.

Being in Ava’s good graces would aid him in the end, and Roman wasn’t foolish enough to turn away a nude woman from his bed.

But he had to be careful.

Not yet knowing how she was going to react, he lay back down and slowly lowered his arm around her, pressing his body closer to hers.

Ava stirred, but rather than turn to him, she arched her back a little, pressing her rear against the front of Roman’s boxers.

She began to rotate her hips ever so slightly, her panties becoming increasingly wet as she did so and Roman’s erection growing in response. He slowly lowered his hand to pull her panties to the side. His erection pressed out of the slit at the front of his boxers, courtesy of his powers.

He still wasn’t stupid enough to actually try to control his erection with his ability to animate inanimate objects, but he was able to form a larger opening at the front of his boxers, making it a lot easier to move past the fabric.

The head of his penis rubbed against Ava’s clit for a moment as he kissed the back of her neck and his hand came around to cup her breast.

It was tight once he entered her, Ava letting out a subtle yelp, but the two were able to get into a rhythm as things became wetter.

She still hadn’t looked at him.

His former teacher had her head thrown back, her eyes closed, defiance in her gesture even if this was what she actually wanted.

Roman’s thoughts started to trickle away as he focused on his stamina, on Ava’s cream-colored body, an intense feeling of warmth spreading over him.

He couldn’t remember if he’d felt the warmth the last time they’d had sex, but it made sense given her power. She was almost hot to the touch, the heat thick in the air now, making him start to sweat.

“Get on top,” she said suddenly, still with her eyes closed.

Ava pressed her face into the pillow as Roman mounted her from behind, the curves of her body heightening his arousal.

He tried not to think of anything.

His eyes half open, Roman watched himself going in and out. Then he focused on Ava’s face, the way it was pressed into his pillow, her head to the side, her mouth wide open as she moaned.

He focused on her face as he went even harder, wishing at that moment that things would work out between the two of them, but knowing it would be impossible in the end.

He saw Ava in the various ways he’d come to know her, from his teacher to his punisher, from someone he’d desperately needed to the way he’d felt after witnessing her behavior in the Western Province.

Roman stopped caring.

After all, what was the point of caring?

Everyone had their skeletons, and some just happened to be uglier than others. And again, thinking this took him back to the big question of who he was and what kind of baggage he brought to the table.

Everyone lived in glass houses.

All these thoughts came to him in a matter of seconds, Roman canceling them out and going at it even harder.

Ava’s hair started to catch fire, the smell of burning fabric reaching his nostrils, quickly overpowering the metallic scent of sex.

For some reason, the visual sent Roman over the top, his sudden orgasm taking Ava by surprise. She stuck her hand beneath her and started touching herself as Roman slowed, then convulsing when she finished.

Roman used his power to put out the fire on the pillow and waved his hand to open a window, giving the smoke an exit.

He wasn’t proud of himself, but pride was something he seldom felt. If anything, he was glad they had fucked.

Roman didn’t yet know how he would remember Ava in the end, but he definitely didn’t want to forget her passion and her power.

“We need to get to headquarters,” she said, still not looking at him.

“Let’s get cleaned up first.”

“Then let’s get breakfast. I’ll tell Rafner we’re running late.”

Chapter Four: Fall from Grace

Margo wondered how long it would take them.

She was surprised to see it was over twenty-four hours before they decided to come, the morning light just starting to appear on the horizon, the buildings glittering.

She was in the living room of Orange’s high-rise apartment with Paris, the doll she had stolen from Roman. Still in Catherine’s body, Margo could now feel the sensation of pleasure, which she’d definitely enjoyed in her time in the apartment.

It was a good escape, especially from the information that now lay in the documents spread out on the coffee table in the living room.

As it turned out, Roman was her half-brother, and rather than fight her in the end, Orange had simply given her this information.

She knew better than to regret killing Orange—no, regret was at odds with a soldier’s duty, and while she was no longer enlisted, she had been raised with that mindset. Regret was a pathway into the dark, a cloud of uncertainty that led to second-guessing, anger at one’s self, remorse.

Orange would have died at some point anyway.

It was better to die at the hands of an old friend. Margo knew his death had been sudden and quick, painless aside from his initial touchdown onto the pavement below.

She hadn’t wanted to leave the evidence in the street, so after he’d jumped she had lowered herself down to the ground and scooped up his splattered remains, formed them into a ball, and used the building’s glass to lift her back to the penthouse suite at the top.

That ball of bone, skin, and collapsed organs was also in the living room, sitting on a highly stylized leather sofa chair.

“Orange,” Margo said, looking over to the ball of flesh as she heard something land on the balcony. “Ready for one more fight?”

A blinding light tore into the living room, shattering all the glass and burning everything it touched.

By this point, Margo had already moved to the next room, the light searing after her as she ran through Orange’s bedroom.

Her doll knew what to do, going the opposite way, where Margo heard it engage someone almost immediately.

Another window shattered, water flooding into space.

Margo took hold of the water and sent it in the other direction, realizing they had surrounded the penthouse on all sides.

This meant they could all fly, which gave Margo an advantage.

The ground beneath her lifted as the ceiling formed into a cone that tore out through the top of the building, suspending Margo in the air so she could see what was happening. She was fast enough to count her enemies—three—before one of them, a man looking like he was made of light, fired a supernova’s worth of energy at her.

But a moment was all Margo needed.

Even as she dropped back into the building, she now held the man’s heart, ripping all the veins from it as the blinding light ceased to exist.

The water stopped, as did some of the scuffling from the other room.

At first, Margo didn’t recognize the man as the same assailant she had faced back at Prison South. Only now, after killing him, did she recall his power, and Margo wondered if this was actually a Centralian attack rather than one by her own country.

She would need answers.

A hole opened up in the wall, steps appearing in the air as Margo moved out, the wind whipping all around her.

Her steps were wide enough for her to maintain her balance as she came around, knowing the water user would be somewhere nearby.

She circled around the building to the spot where she had just seen her opponent moments ago, only to realize the water user had indeed moved inside.

A blast of water shot out the window, slamming into Margo and spilling into her mouth as she started to fall. She quickly took hold of the water, using it as a rope to pull herself up once she hit the side of the building.

As more water struck her, Margo began to form a protective surface around herself using the building's outer material. She threw herself back into the living room, avoiding another wave that crashed over her head.

Movement in the kitchen. Margo latched on to the ball of flesh that used to be Orange and hurtled it in that direction, blood and bone and skin exploding everywhere as it struck the water user.

Margo pulled spikes from the floor and heard a woman scream.

On her feet now, she used the floor to carry her to the kitchen, where she found the woman with spikes pressing out of her body and water spilling out of her mouth as she whimpered.

“I expected better from someone like you,” she said, noticing the woman wore a uniform similar to the one Margo had as part of the Protectorate. Margo twisted the woman’s head around, breaking the water user’s neck.

“Keep her alive,” she said to Paris, even though she knew her doll couldn’t hear her.

There was still some struggling in the other room, and Margo found Paris there pinning a winged woman as the exemplar tried to swipe at her with talons.

Paris was in pretty bad shape, her face and arms all cut up, but she maintained her grip. When Margo took over, the carpeted floor lifted to completely cover the woman, only allowing room for her face.

The winged woman gasped, realizing she was now stuck in the floor with a killer doll attached to her back.

“And you,” Margo said, crouching in front of the woman’s face. “Are you really the best our country has to offer?”

Rather than whimper like the other woman had, this one seethed with anger, a vein appearing on her forehead as she glared at Margo.

Margo laughed. “No, they didn’t send their best. They knew better than to do something like that. You read the briefing on me, did you not?”

“Yes,” the woman finally said through gritted teeth.

“Then you know what I am capable of. It’s rather sad, isn’t it? They spent years raising you to be a killing machine, the best the Western Province has to offer, only to send you on a suicide mission. You must have known you weren’t going to be able to stop me. What is your power anyway? You have wings and talons, and if you had been the first one to engage me, I would have used your own wings to fly you up into the air and slam you down to the ground. You know the sensation. Imagine yourself spiraling, but you can’t actually swoop up. Imagine someone else controlling your only means of escape.”

The woman’s cheek twitched, fear starting to stitch across her face. It was only there for a moment before the exemplar went back to staring defiantly at Margo.

“But just three of you?” She shook her head. “Has the planning really gotten that poor over the years? And what’s with teaming up with Centralia? I thought we stopped doing that years ago.”

The woman didn’t say anything.

“You might as well speak to me. There will be no repercussions from our government for what you tell me. I’m going to kill you after we finish speaking. I can do it in one of two ways: I can make it quick by rupturing your heart or your brain, or I can make it excruciatingly slow. I can make it take six hours, so you have to live through every moment of it. The choice is yours.”

“It’s a new pilot program,” the woman blurted out.

“Fucking Centralia. You weren’t there during the Plague; you were just a girl in a government orphanage. Centralia always plays both sides. Whatever is going on in this world, they are generally benefiting from it in more than one way. And now they have a pilot program to join our not-so-best soldiers with theirs? Doesn’t this just seem a little laughable to you? Doesn’t it tell you what your role is in all of this? You were never that great; that’s why they paired you with the Centralian and put you in this pilot program. Why would a government put their best exemplars in a program to train and engage with Centralians in Centralia?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“No, you don’t know,” Margo said, forgetting herself for the moment in her anger at the joint military operation. “This is the same kind of shit they always pull. And you’ve gotten caught up in it, just like I did. Although our cases are quite different. Look at you. They sent you, a lady with the wings and talons, against one of the strongest exemplars in our world. Who would okay this?”

“I…”

“Do you even know about the guy who used to live here?”

“No…” the woman said, an apprehensive look now on her face.

“Of course you don’t. That’s the other problem with our program, you know, the program that makes the Protectorate. They don’t really have a history of going over their own history. I’m sure you’ve been to Ravja.”

The woman tried to nod. She was unable to.

“Yes, everyone’s been there. Who doesn’t like to see a shithole turning itself around? The reason I ask is because of the two exemplars responsible for ending the Western Plague. Do you know who they are?”

Again, the woman couldn’t shake her head, but she made a gesture as if she was trying to.

“One thing we could blame it on is joint military operations, but I suppose it’s a bit more complicated than that. I’m sure you learned that the Protectorate paired with Centralia to stop the spread of the Plague, and a pair of our service members made the ultimate sacrifice. Well, what really happened was two members of the Protectorate, Destry and Amethyst, became infected, and they used their infection to stop the man named Omar who had orchestrated the spread of the infection. Funny side story: I trained with all three of these people.”

“I thought…”

“You thought what?”

“I thought you were going to kill me.”

“I am going to kill you,” Margo said, suddenly annoyed with the woman. “But it isn’t often that I keep someone alive long enough to have a lengthy, one-sided conversation with them about the terrible decisions our government continues to make when it comes to dealing with Centralia. And seeing as how you’re one of the ‘chosen ones’ paired with a Centralian, it seems like the right conversation to have right now.”

The two were silent for a moment, Margo waiting for the woman to speak. When she didn’t, Margo continued, “Are there more coming for me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Are there more coming for me? Need I remind you that you have one of two options in dying here this morning?”

“I don’t want to die.”

“That’s not one of your options,” Margo told her. “What did they tell you I looked like?”

“They told us you could be in a number of bodies.”

“Do you like this body?” Margo asked as she stood, running her hands along the front of her body and stopping at her chest. “This one had a nice pair of tits. She wasn’t alive very long, but from what I could tell she was a little ditzy. I also do not like the white hair with the red streak in it, but I haven’t been bothered to change it.”

“I don’t know,” the winged exemplar said.

“I think you do.”

“I’m just disappointed I didn’t complete my mission,” the woman said.

“Ha! They trained you well.” Margo peered down at her, a predatory grin taking shape on her face. “I used to be like you, really. But things happened.”

Margo waved her hand at the crumbled wall where the woman had flown through, pressing more of the building material away as she made the hole larger.

“So, are there more coming?”

“Yes,” the woman finally told her.

“Thanks. I guess I’ll have to go then. I do have some things I’m planning to accomplish here in Centralia.”

“You could turn yourself in.”

Margo started to laugh. “They really have gotten to you, haven’t they? Why would I turn myself in at this point? You know, I think there are now three options,” Margo said, turning back to the woman. “And I will get to that third option in a moment. How old are you?”

“I… I’m nineteen.”

“Isn’t that sad?”

“My age?”

“No, that our government thinks so poorly of you that they sent you to die at such a young age. If I were in charge of running a program like this, I would at least send older exemplars, not only for the experience but so the young ones don’t have to die. I wouldn’t send my best exemplars, but I would send the older ones who would manage to skirt by. You know the type I’m talking about. The Protectorate has a few.”

The woman tried to nod again.

“But I wouldn’t send you. Although, I do wonder why you were even offered membership in the Protectorate, considering your power. As a mutant, a freak, you don’t really have much to offer in the way of an actual fight. Any elemental user could take you down. Anyone who could use telepathic powers would have you flying to the moon in a matter of moments. The man whose home we are in could control oxygen, so he could have simply collapsed your lungs or swollen them or stopped you from breathing until you spiraled down to the ground. I’m sure he could have killed you in a number of ways. I actually…” Margo bit her lip. She shook her head and continued, “Never mind. Where was I? Let’s just skip ahead. Option number three.”

Margo started to remove the flooring, and as she did her doll merged with the material, Paris reforming next to her back in immaculate condition.

“Are you okay, dear?”

“I’m fine,” Paris told her, her hand going around Margo’s waist.

The female exemplar got to her feet almost immediately, her talons taking shape.

“You still plan to attack me?” Margo asked, nodding to the opening in the wall.

The woman hesitated. “I…”

“Go. You can die another day. And when you get to wherever you’re going, tell them to send someone stronger.”

The woman started to back away, and once she was certain Margo wasn’t going to attack her from behind, she took off, her wings spreading as she flew out the hole in the wall.

Margo and Paris walked over to watch the winged exemplar fly away, the woman’s reflection visible on some of the buildings.

“I thought we were going to have fun with her,” Paris said with a playful pout.

“We are,” Margo said.

The woman fell from the sky and plummeted to the ground below.

Paris squeezed her hand. “That was cruel.”

Margo shrugged. “At least she got to fly one last time.”

Chapter Five: To the East

Roman followed Ava into the Centralian Intelligence Agency headquarters. He ignored the giant installation outside, not caring about which way the arrows on the sculpture were pointing or the meaning behind it. He knew the truth about his own government now, well aware that nothing was as it should be, that his country had long ago betrayed its own citizens and its own laws.

But rather than fight back, Roman was now part of the system, and like most people in any system, akin to fish in a school, he planned to go with the flow.

With his dolls behind him and Casper deanimated in his pocket, Roman felt a little rumble in his stomach as he reached the reception area.

He covered his burp with his shoulder as Celia offered him a look that told him she was infatuated by Roman and found his little belch cute.

He smiled back at her.

He knew there would never be drama between the two of them. Weird as it was, Roman was her creator; same with Coma and Casper. If there ever was tension, he could always deactivate them.

It wasn’t an ideal relationship, nor was it in any way progressive, but it was what it was. This was the life Roman had created and, in some instances, the life that had festered around him.

His eyes fell upon Ava’s elegant backside and quickly jumped to her red hair.

Predictably, she had been nicer to him this morning, especially after what had happened last night. But they both had ulterior motives, Roman knew this. Or if she didn’t, he definitely did.

They turned down an immaculate hallway with windows on one side that overlooked the courtyard. A few Centralian agents stood near the windows, sipping at cups of coffee. One of the agents had horns while another had hedgehog quills instead of hair. The third agent looked normal enough aside from her completely white eyes.

Roman felt the telepathic creep almost immediately as he stared at the three of them.

“Telepath,” Roman muttered when they came to a large wooden door with golden trim. He opened the door for Ava, letting her in first and ushering in his two dolls after.

“And… he brought his dolls,” Jess said, a big smile on her face as a curl of blond hair fell onto her forehead. She was seated near Miranda, the blue-haired telepath. There was another female Roman had met before, as well as the strongman who was quite thin. Roman also saw Rafner sitting at the end, the leader of the unit dressed in all black.

Curiously, there was an exemplar team in the room as well.

Roman recognized them from the back of a cereal box or something.

They were known as Team Saint and were led by the man aptly known as Saint, who was seated next to Rafner. The man had thin black hair with streaks of gray in it and wore a trenchcoat, a mask with a jewel in its center covering his face.

Next to him sat a beautiful woman with a gray hue to her eyes who seemed incredibly delicate, everything about her angular. There was another man who was quite muscular, a hint of blue in his dark hair. Finally, there was a woman with ebony skin and short white hair, a white mask on her face too.

“Roman, ladies,” Rafner said, smiling at the dolls, “please be seated.”

There were only two seats available at the end of the table and Ava took one while Roman filed into the other.

He got the hint.

But rather than deactivate his dolls, he simply had them stand behind him, their hands on his shoulders.

“Because that’s not creepy,” Jess said under her breath. She reached for a cup of tea, and Roman animated the cup as she did, moving the opening away from her face.

“Two can play at that game,” she said, a hint of playfulness in her tone.

Roman shot a glare at Miranda when he felt the presence of a telepath at the back of his mind. “Stop it.”

“I was just checking a little,” she said playfully.

“I’m glad to see everyone is getting along,” Rafner said, clearing his throat. “Roman, I would like to introduce you to Team Saint.”

“I know who they are; I used to eat their cereal. Or was it rice mix? Maybe it was some type of energy drink…”

The man with the mask on flinched, but the other three made no indication they were offended by what Roman had said.

“Then you’re already familiar with Saint, Thalia,” Rafner said, gesturing toward the woman with the angular face, “Blue and Banish.”

“Hi,” Banish said, offering Roman a tight smile beneath her white mask. The man known as Blue simply shrugged, his arms now crossed over his chest.

“Not to be blunt about it, but why are they here again?” Roman asked, Blue scoffing at his question. “This is about Nadine, is it not?”

“It is. And until I am done speaking, please refrain from asking any additional questions,” Rafner said, his voice growing cold.

“Got it,” Roman mumbled.

He felt Celia squeeze his shoulder, which he took to mean the people seated in this room were all tightwads, even though that likely wasn’t her intended meaning.

“Nadine Unders has now killed several of our most elite agents,” Rafner said.

“She has?” Roman asked, trying not to grin.

He knew he was being an ass, but he also knew Nadine better than anyone in the room, and he was well aware of what she was capable of doing. Hell, even though it was his own country, part of him couldn’t help but be proud of her.

“Again, questions after I finish,” said Rafner. “We tried to initiate her streamlined removal in the stealthiest way possible, when she visited a stash spot she had in northern Centralia. The exemplar was a Type II Class C with the ability to turn invisible. She managed to kill him. Yesterday, we initiated another attack on a meeting she was having with her handler. The three exemplars there were also killed.”

Rafner cleared his throat as if waiting for someone to ask a question.

No one said anything, so Roman shrugged.

“Do you have something you would like to add to this?” Rafner asked.

“I thought I couldn’t talk.”

“It appears I’m not going to be able to stop you.”

“I know enough about Nadine to know that sending a handful of agents isn’t going to do the trick. She’s incredibly cunning. And frankly, I don’t understand what my role in this is, especially if you’ve already sent people out to ‘remove her in a streamlined way,’” Roman said, using air quotes.

“We have to explore all options. Do you have a better idea?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Roman said, taking the floor. “I have reached out to Nadine; I will be meeting with her soon, and I will convince her that we need to go East. I will accomplish the tasks set out for me. But before I remove her, as you have requested, I need to see how far they’ve come along with the dissection of my power.” Roman swallowed hard. “So we go East, and during that time I find out what I can. Once Nadine and I return, I should be in a position to get as much information as possible on Eli and Lisa. That is, if she hasn’t already told me during our trip. My only problem is that it may be a bit of a challenge convincing her we need to go back East. She needs to be the one that wants to go, but maybe there’s some way I can help guide her in that direction. So after we meet, I’m going to try to figure out an angle that will help convince her. Unless someone here has a suggestion?”

“We would like an opportunity to go after her,” Saint said in a gruff voice.

“Okay, then you go after her,” Roman said. “It’ll save me the trouble.”

“No, we will use you as an auxiliary team,” Rafner told the group. “Plus, there is the other issue as to why Team Saint is here, which we can discuss next. Moving on. Roman, I think it is imperative that you form your own group, and that this group travels with you to the East.”

“How’s that supposed to happen again?” Roman asked. “Especially if it’s just the two of us—well, four—Nadine, Coma, Celia and me. And Casper,” he said, patting his shirt pocket and ignoring some of the uncomfortable stares he’d just received. “So five. It’s going to be pretty obvious if some people are following us around.”

“Not if it’s just one person and an object,” Jessica said.

“I may be of use too,” said a woman Roman recognized as part of Rafner’s team, although he couldn’t remember her name.

“I’m too visible,” Ava said with disdain. “Nadine will recognize me.”

“Is it the red hair? I think it’s the red hair,” Roman said, trying to make a joke.

No one laughed.

“Yes, maybe you aren’t the right person for this job, Ava,” Rafner gently told her, “but you do have the most experience. You know what? We will figure out another role for you in this regard. Give me some time to think it through. To be honest with everyone here, I wasn’t planning for Roman to come in with such a good plan.”

“Thank you?”

“I’m not finished. It is a good plan, but it is also risky, and it carries with it the potential to start a war between our intelligence branches. But perhaps… You know what? Never mind. Everyone spies on Centralia. We are all aware of that, yet we try to maintain good relations with the various countries regardless. If this gets discovered, it may lead to repercussions, including the withdrawal of our peacekeeping troops from the more rebellious regions of the Eastern Province.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Everyone in the room turned to Roman at once, most of them smirking at his cocky yet naïve statement, a few of them grimacing and two of them groaning.

“I’ve already been there,” Roman reminded him. “Has anyone else been East?”

Only the woman on Rafner’s team raised her hand. Roman looked at her again, trying to remember her name. She had dark purple skin, slicked-back hair, and a nose piercing of all things.

“Okay; Naomi, Jess, and Miranda, you will tail Roman. And Miranda, you will communicate with him telepathically and relay information to our contacts at the embassy. Ambassador Darwin will be interested to take part in this, considering some of the councils he’s on. I know this has been a shorter meeting than I would have liked, but let’s break for now. I will spend the rest of the day getting the necessary authorizations and running this up the chain of command. Expect to leave tomorrow. And Roman…”

“Yes?”

“You have twenty-four hours to convince Nadine that you need to go East.”

“Will do.”

“And one more thing, just so you are aware—just so everyone in the room is aware. Last night, a joint operation to take out Margo failed. We are not at a point where we can discuss the next way we plan to go after her, but know that those discussions are taking place, and maybe this is an area where you could assist us, Team Saint.”

“Go after Margo?” Saint asked, looking at his team. “If it is what our government is asking us to do, we’ll do it.”

Chapter Six: Diner and Dinner

Roman had been feeling great up until that last part about Margo.

Now sitting at a diner with his dolls, he couldn’t help but feel an ache in his chest for revenge. How sweet it would be to pull off what he was planning and rid the world of his terrible half-sister at the same time.

His eyes drifted to a poster advertising a new energy drink that had been plastered near the entrance featuring Mister Fist the strongman, William Bottorf the duplicator, MindLenz the telepath and Plume the fire user, all blasting toward the viewer.

Roman shook his head.

What would the world think if they knew who Ava truly was, his beautiful teacher and all her flaws?

The waitress came by and set down a plate with half a sandwich and a side of potatoes fried in an Eastern Province spice. He went for the potatoes first, his nostrils burning as soon as he took his first bite.

“You seem upset,” Celia said, concern flitting across her face. She sat across from him, Coma at his side.

He had been feeling closer and closer to Coma since their interactions in the West, something about her savage side appealing to him. Roman could feel an energy between them, a spark.

“I wish you had let me say something at that meeting,” Casper said from his jacket pocket.

Now that Roman could use his powers in public, he didn’t really care if she was animated or not.

“I can only imagine what you would have said,” he told her.

“I would have given all of them a piece of my mind. And what’s this? Now we have to go meet Nadine and go to the East? I didn’t like the East the first time we went,” Casper lamented. “It’s oppressive as fuck over there.”

“I could always just keep you deactivated while we’re there,” Roman said as he ate one of his potatoes.

“You better not. Remember? I saved the day last time. It was my ass that killed Kevin.” She thumped her rear against Roman’s chest. “And I could do the same to you.”

“Kill me?”

“If you mess with me, yes.”

“Then you’d essentially be killing yourself.”

“The ultimate sacrifice.”

A child sitting in the booth in front of him turned, saw that Roman was speaking to a tiny woman in his pocket, and looked back to his mother.

“It is risky in the East,” Coma said, “but we will be ready.”

“We are always ready,” Celia said. “With Roman around, we can do anything.”

“Stop—I’m going to vomit and I don’t even have a stomach,” Casper said to Celia.

“Take a deep breath; that can help,” Celia told the tiny doll.

“It must be nice,” Casper groaned.

“What must be nice?” asked Roman.

“Having a fan club.”

“Moving on…” Roman reached for his sandwich and took a bite, chewing it slowly. It was good, but the meat in the center was a bit cold.

He used his power to activate his napkin, which swooped up to a point and then flattened, scooting over to his hand.

“You could just reach for it,” Casper said.

Roman shrugged.

“I don’t think it’ll be very hard to find Eli and Lisa,” Celia said, trying to steer the conversation in her own way. “I’m sure Nadine knows where they are. And Nadine is friendly with us. I don’t think this will be a very difficult mission at all.”

“Perhaps,” Roman said. “But there are other factors at play.”

And as if those other factors existed in the form of three women, the door of the diner chimed as Naomi, Miranda, and Jess entered.

Miranda saw Roman and turned in his direction, the other two following her. They all wore regular clothing now, none of them in their black spy outfits.

“Sorry, no room,” Casper said, sticking her tongue out at Jess. “Beat it, bi-otch.”

“We can get a booth,” Roman said, waving a waitress over.

Casper started to say something and he pressed his thumb down on her head, shoving her into his pocket and deactivating her.

The waitress begrudgingly wiped down a booth, then brought his food over after Roman and his dolls were seated.

“Why this diner?” Jess asked as the Centralian agent joined Roman in the booth, the other two filing in after her. “Of all the diners around HQ, you choose this shithole?”

The waitress started to give Jess a dirty look, then considered what she’d said and nodded in agreement.

“These places are good,” Roman told her. “They have this particular ambiance. There used to be one not too far from my home.”

He smiled at Jess and Naomi, the purple-haired woman not returning a smile. He figured he was going to have to work on her some.

Jess did return his smile, although hers was a bit crooked.

“When are you meeting her?” Miranda asked.

“Who?” came Roman’s reply.

“The subject chosen for streamlined removal.” She cocked her head to the left as she gazed at Roman. “You know, the one.”

“The one…” Roman said. “Later, in the afternoon. I’ve already reached out to her.”

“Do you need help convincing her to go to the East?” the telepath asked.

Roman shook his head. “I’ve got it.”

“Are you sure about that? You seem pretty confident for someone who has no idea how they’re going to convince this woman to return to her home country.”

“I have some leverage,” Roman said, focusing again on his sandwich. He took a bite, chewing and swallowing before continuing what he was saying. “What you three don’t know, and what we know,” Roman said, bringing Coma and Celia into the conversation, “is that Nadine is also quite skeptical of her own government’s actions and wishes. She has gone against them before, which I’m sure you’ve read about in the briefing.”

Naomi nodded.

“So only one of you has read the briefing?”

“I was going to read it on the train ride to the Eastern Province,” Miranda admitted.

“Same here,” said Jess.

The waitress brought over three teas, and Roman noted that the three women hadn’t actually ordered.

Miranda, Roman thought, and just thinking her name elicited a response.

You called?

Actually, I’m glad you decided to check in on me here, he thought back to the telepath while the other two went for their teas.

Are you finally going to let me in?

Yes, Roman thought to her. My place. Tonight. You and me. My dolls will be deactivated. I suppose I could sound more romantic.

Miranda nearly choked on her tea, but it didn’t take long for her look of shock to quickly leave her face. I was never attracted to you for romance anyway. And yes, I’ll be there. Put your dolls in a closet.

I’ll be sure to do that. Now, shall we return to our regularly scheduled conversation?

Let’s.

“Read the briefing,” Roman said. “I get the feeling the three of you think this is going to be an easy mission. We’ve just come back from the West, at least two of us, and that mission was a little…”

Roman searched for the right word to describe it.

“Shitty?” Jess asked.

“Yeah. You let me know how it is next time they give you the assignment to go after and kill one of your coworkers.”

The table grew quiet for a moment.

“Anyway,” Roman said. “Just get ready. I can’t help but have the feeling going East is going to start off simple but get more complicated as the days progress. Our goal needs to be making it back here. We will try to cover what we can while we’re there, but we need to keep our goal in mind.”

A teleporter appeared, the sound of fizzling water meeting Roman’s ears.

It took nearly thirty seconds for the man’s form to solidify, but once he was ready, the teleporter smiled at Roman and bowed his head slightly.

He was an unlicensed teleporter, evident in the clothing he wore, no smock or indication he worked for the State. The guy was actually in a pair of sandals.

Everything started to blur together, and as it swirled back into focus, Roman found himself in a large warehouse-like room, empty aside from Nadine and his dolls, who stood on either side of him.

“Hi,” Celia said, the teleporter already sizzling away.

“Hello,” Nadine said shortly.

Coma simply nodded.

She moved a few steps away from them, taking a place near the door.

“Is this where you’ve been staying?” Roman asked Nadine as he looked out the nearest window. He was trying to get an idea of where he was, but the window was only facing an alley.

“It’s too dangerous to meet there.” Nadine took a step closer to him, and as she did, Roman started to sense that she wanted to embrace him, to greet him properly. He recalled that they had become intimate the last time he’d seen her before heading to the West.

He didn’t know exactly where they stood in that regard, but there would be plenty of time for it later.

“So how was the West?” she asked.

Roman had already messaged Nadine, telling her a little more about what he had done over there, but he hadn’t gone into much detail.

As they stood across from one another in the abandoned warehouse, Roman went over what his mission had been, and how he—or his tiniest doll—had killed Kevin Blackbook in the end.

“His cat girls too?” she asked.

“One was killed at the banquet Kevin was hosting; the other one attacked us back at his little pleasure house. It was really…” Roman searched for the right word to describe what had happened. “All of it was bizarre. I still can’t help but think of Kevin as this overweight loser who sat in the cubicle next to me. Not that his size really mattered, but it was part of his overall demeanor, how he moved around.”

“From our brief interactions, I seem to remember that.”

“Yeah,” Roman said, running a hand through his white hair. “So, streamlined removal. That’s what they wanted me to do there. And I did it. And now…”

“Yes?”

Roman noticed a glint in her chest area, his eyes falling on Nadine’s necklace.

“Do you like it?”

“Is it new?” Roman asked as he looked at the necklace and the red jewel on it. It was a silver necklace, the jewel much larger than he felt like it should have been.

“Just a gift I bought myself,” Nadine said. “Do you like it?”

“I do.”

“You were saying?”

“And now they want me to go after Margo,” Roman lied. “So it’s kind of funny, really. Back to square one. That was my original intention after, well, you know.”

“Are you officially part of the agency now?”

“I don’t know what I am. I think I’m a guy who’s in trouble for some things, and they’re using me as much as they can. Margo will probably kill me…”

Roman heard Celia choke up behind him. He turned to see her with her hands over her mouth, a look of anguish on her face.

“They also tasked me with figuring out more about what the East knows about my power. I’m going to be honest with you,” Roman told Nadine, “they know that I went East.”

“And they know about me? That would explain some things.”

“I can’t help you there,” he said with a shrug. “I had my memories wiped. They tried to get to me, but they’ve failed so far. I think they’re tired of trying, and they just want to use me to their advantage now. And as I said, they really want to know what the East has done in dissecting my power.”

“I’ve been wanting to see what they’ve done with your powers as well,” Nadine admitted.

“Are you worried about it?”

“I should be frank with you, Roman. I don’t know what happened to me, but I’m sick of all this. All this back and forth, the espionage, and each side always trying to one-up the other. The thing is, as odd as it seems, I believe my country will be better off without your power. With your power, we could cause a war.”

“You could supply both sides of a different war,” Roman added.

Nadine took a few steps toward the window that looked out at the alley, Roman joining her.

“Then let’s head to the East,” he finally said after a long pause.

They were close enough that their knuckles were touching, but Roman didn’t reach out and grab her hand. He wanted to, but it was important to maintain decorum right now. And besides, he knew he wasn’t supposed to get too close to her.

At least not yet anyway.

“I had an interesting dream the other night,” Nadine said, still looking out the window.

“Did you?”

“Yes. Oddly enough, you and I were riding the train to the East together.”

“Weird. Anything else happen in the dream?”

“We were happy; we both had this sense of purpose.”

“Who else was with us?”

“Your dolls, and just another random lady sharing our cabin with us.”

“Interesting. And you didn’t recognize her?”

“Only that she had a bowtie. We all wore bowties, actually.”

Roman grinned. “You remember your dreams way better than I do, but maybe that’s by design. I don’t really want to remember mine.”

“Mostly nightmares?”

Roman nodded. “Mostly. So, are we doing this?”

“Heading to the East? I don’t see why we shouldn’t…”

For a moment the sun dipped behind a cloud, Roman and Nadine’s reflections now visible in the window. He looked at her reflection and smiled. “Tomorrow. I’ll put in for the paperwork. It won’t be as hard as last time. You need to check with your handler or anything?”

“I don’t think my handler will mind,” Nadine said, Roman knowing perfectly well what she was hinting at.

“That’s good,” Roman said. “So tomorrow then. Should I meet you at the train station?”

“Let’s meet at the Eastern Mane. How about the ten o’clock train? That will put us there by nightfall.”

“Are we going to the same place we went last time? Brattle, was it?”

Nadine shook her head. “No, if we’re going to look into this, we need to go to the capital, to Verne.”

“Verne it is.”

Roman and Nadine stood there together quietly, both looking out the window.

“I guess I should order a teleporter for you. To a random diner?”

Roman snorted at Nadine’s suggestion. “You know me so well; I can port back to my home from there.”

“A diner it is.”

His smile started to crack when a length of fabric unfurled from the ceiling, the swaths of cloth growing thicker by the second and wrapping together until they formed a man.

“Who will it be?” the teleporter asked.

Roman nodded his dolls over. Once Celia and Coma had joined him, he felt a strange sensation spread through his body as it started to stretch toward the ceiling.

He reformed with his dolls at a designated teleportation zone near a diner that was being renovated.

“Bye,” Celia told the teleporter, the man nodding before leaving.

Roman looked at the nearest street sign and saw he was near the center of Centralia, which was actually not very far from his apartment, no more than a couple of kilometers.

So he walked.

His dolls with him, Roman kept his hands in the pocket of his jacket as he made his way to the west.

The streets were very busy, and aside from a light wind, it was a pretty day in a city that was often gray.

The clouds had shifted again, and the sun was reflecting off some of the buildings, casting arcs of light onto the streets and providing shade that was instantly five degrees cooler than the places where the sun reached.

“Why don’t you animate Casper?” Coma asked. “She likes this sort of thing.”

“Sure, but she’s your responsibility if she gets out of hand,” Roman said as he waved his hand over his pocket, Casper poking her head out.

“Hey, you’re taking me on a walk!” she said in a cheery voice.

“You can thank Coma for that. It was her idea.”

“Do I have to?” Casper asked. “And what’d I miss? Did we save the world yet?”

“Hardly,” Roman said.

“We met with Nadine,” Celia chimed in. “She looks like she’s lost a pound or two. Don’t you think so?”

“I didn’t notice,” Coma said.

“Ugh, Nadine,” Casper groaned. “Are we heading to the East or what? How did you convince her? Did you promise her a little cunnilingus?”

“Not exactly,” Roman said, unable to prevent a grin from shaping on his face.

Every time Casper was vulgar, Roman had to remind himself that her personality was part of him, although there were times he didn’t know which part of him she was replicating.

He had forgiven her for how she’d thrown him under the trolley in the West when she had blabbed to Ava and the other exemplars about what Roman had done during his first trip to the Eastern Province.

Casper’s assistance had turned out to be in his favor in the end, if killing his former coworker could be considered ‘saving the day.’

“And tonight?” Casper asked.

She had been talking nonstop for a few minutes now while Roman focused on something else, his thoughts running a bit rampant inside his skull.

“I have other plans for tonight. We leave in the morning.”

Roman didn’t say much more as the three of them walked. Casper eventually transferred from his jacket pocket to the pocket on the front of Coma’s Gothic Loli dress, the tiny doll commenting on people who passed them.

Once they arrived back at Roman’s home, he asked Celia to make a light meal, noticing that the pantry was fully stocked and there were several bottles of wine in it as well.

It wasn’t long before he got a message from Miranda, asking him if it was okay if she came over a little earlier and reminding him to put his dolls up.

“Everyone in the closet,” Roman said, Casper lighting into Roman for making such a strange demand.

“And another thing…” the tiny doll started to say as he lifted her by the shoulder and she almost wiggled her way out of his grip. “Let me go!”

“This has to happen,” Roman told her, and in that instant Casper was deactivated. Celia and Coma got into the closet, Roman deactivating Celia first.

“I’m going to keep you active, but I need you to stay here,” Roman told Coma.

“I understand.”

“I can’t tell you everything that’s going on right now. I hope you understand that.”

“I understand.”

“It’s going to get a little stranger before it gets better.”

“Assuredly so.”

Roman placed his hand on her waist, looking Coma deep in her red eyes. “Thanks for understanding.”

“I’ll stay here. If my services are needed, I’ll be ready.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be anything like that. It’s just best to have someone else around, just in case.”

Roman messaged Miranda, letting her know to come now.

After a quick trip to the restroom to make sure he was presentable, Roman returned to the kitchen just as an orb made of smoke began to form in the center of the room. It floated around for a moment before finding a suitable place, where Miranda appeared alongside an authorized female teleporter.

The teleporter was gone before Roman could tell Miranda how great she looked.

Her blue hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a red dress and a short black jacket, ballet flats that were strung up to her knees and a black belt made of shiny leather.

“Flattery will get you nowhere. Why am I here, Roman?”

“I made food,” Roman said, motioning toward the table.

“You made it, or one of your dolls did?”

“Eat, I’ll pour us some wine.”

“Again, why am I here?” Miranda said, and Roman started to feel that telepathic creep at the back of the skull.

“I felt some tension between us. I figured we could relieve it with a nice dinner and some wine.”

“Is that all?” With Miranda standing just a few inches away from him now, Roman could feel the energy passing between them.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

For a moment Roman thought that she was going to kiss him, but she walked right past him instead, brushing her shoulder against him, her faint lavender scent meeting his nostrils.

She sat and the two of them ate, Roman discussing what had happened with Nadine. He could feel her prowling freely in his head now, confirming everything he’d said.

He knew that eventually, even if she did have some self-control, she would figure out why he had invited her over.

And Roman let her.

It wasn’t long after they’d finished eating until they were on the couch finishing their first bottle of wine and she made a sound with her throat.

“You…” She turned to Roman, a curious look on her face.

“You weren’t supposed to check in that box,” Roman said, tapping on his temple.

She smiled, her cheeks red from the alcohol. “You’re letting me look around freely.”

“It’s the wine,” Roman assured her. “I don’t normally let telepaths pry.”

The stage was set.

Roman knew it, and Miranda had come to accept it.

Neither of them waited any longer.

She moved on top of him, Roman bracing himself for what it was about to be like to have sex with a telepath.

Chapter Seven: Telepathic Scenes

Roman was falling.

It took him a moment to realize what was happening, that Miranda was fully in his mind now, both of them spiraling in the air as she fucked the living shit out of him.

His realization became a spark on the horizon that spread toward him, engulfing both of them in a matter of seconds, the two now rolling through a sea of embroidered cushions as the canopy above swelled into myriad images.

And for a moment, Roman was under the telepath’s spell again.

He gazed up at the images, watching as they swirled together, faces appearing, mouths opening, tongues falling out of the mouths with spit dripping off their tips.

There’s more, a voice said at the back of his head.

No, Roman replied, again coming to grips with what was happening.

In a flash he was back in his living room, lying on the floor, Miranda on top of him, the telepath’s hands on his chest, her tits perkier than ever as she pressed them together.

And Roman let it happen, simply watching.

He let her take full control, to the point that Miranda was now in charge of his body, Roman fucking her the way she wanted to be fucked. He was merely a hard prick by this point, Miranda not at all concerned if he orgasmed or not. Her only concern was to keep him as erect as humanly possible.

And it went on like this for much longer than it should have, the telepath switching positions and at one point sitting on Roman’s face, Roman entirely under her spell.

He did finally orgasm in the end, but only at her command, and even then she left Roman with the mess on his belly, a reason to move to the bathroom to clean up.

Roman’s own thoughts came to him once he was in the shower alone.

He canceled them all out.

Roman knew what he was doing.

After cleaning himself off, he returned to the living room to find Miranda on the couch, the woman now in a crimson robe she’d found in one of the linen closets.

“Thank you,” the telepath said with a purr as Roman sat down next to her. Miranda lightly ran her fingers through her hair. “How did you know I needed that?”

“I aim to please,” Roman said, waiting for her to check and see if he actually meant it.

She didn’t.

Roman couldn’t help but smile. The telepath now somewhat trusted him, which was exactly what he wanted.

“Was it good for you?” he asked. “I hope it was.”

“That was…” Miranda bit her lip, looking away from him.

“What?” he asked her in a soft, teasing voice.

“It was absolutely amazing. I’m guessing you know I’ve done something similar to that before…”

“Take over someone’s mind and then use them to fuck you the way you want to be fucked?”

“Yes, but yours was different. It was just so…” She let out a deep breath. “Let’s not analyze what has transpired here.”

There was a knock at the door, startling both of them.

Roman went to the door and looked through the peephole, unable to hide his gasp.

“Shit,” he said to himself, glad as hell that the woman standing outside the door hadn’t just teleported inside his apartment.

I’m aware, Miranda thought to Roman. Make her go away. I don’t feel like leaving tonight.

She’s hard to persuade.

So am I. You don’t want her seeing me here, do you?

Shit. I’ll see what I can do, Roman thought back.

It’s your ass, not mine.

After making sure he was presentable, Roman casually opened the door, noticing the smell of alcohol almost instantly. “Brought you your paperwork…” Ava said, trying to cover a hiccup.

“I was sleeping,” Roman told her, feigning annoyance in his voice.

The redhead looked at him curiously for a moment. “Care if I come in?”

“It’s been a long day, Ava. I decided to walk back from the briefing, and then Casper wanted to go to the park. So much walking. I just need to get some sleep.”

His former teacher’s eyes narrowed on Roman’s hair, which was slightly wet. “You look like you’ve just got out of the shower.”

“No, it was just warm in my room. I should probably open a window, but I was enjoying it. Can we postpone this?” he asked, trying to be both firm and kind at the same time. “You really mean a lot to me.”

“Yes,” Ava said suddenly, shoving the paperwork into Roman’s hands. “You sure have a way of making it seem like I matter to you. Whatever. You know what? Maybe you’re right. I’m sorry, I’m saying too much. Roman?”

“Yes?”

“Good luck in the East. I know you can just forge this paperwork, but we wanted it to look as legitimate as possible. I’ll be in contact when you get back, as mental messaging won’t work there.”

“Right.”

“Maybe we can grab dinner once you’re back. And discuss the next part of this, you know.”

“I know.”

Roman could tell that Ava still wanted to come in, that she wanted him to embrace her. But he merely smiled at the woman, trying not to think in that moment of what he was attempting to do here by steering their relationship.

He had to watch his thoughts.

Ava begrudgingly said goodbye, and Roman shut the door, setting the paperwork on a table off to the left.

“I’m glad she didn’t blow the door down,” Miranda said, her blue hair now pulled back into a tight ponytail. “I didn’t know you two were…”

“It’s complicated.”

“I don’t care, personally,” Miranda said. “You aren’t the only…”

“Only what?” Roman asked her with a grin.

“Never mind. Let’s go to bed. Unless you want me to sleep on the couch or something,” she said with a yawn.

“No, let’s. My bed is definitely big enough for two people.”

“I figured as much.”

Once they made it to his bedroom, Roman slept better than he’d slept in a week, likely because of the telepath.

No dreams, which gave him a little anxiety when he woke up in the morning considering he’d been hoping to meet with Abby the dreamwalker again.

After Roman was up, he turned to see Miranda on his bed, a bit inconsiderate in the way that she slept with her arms sprawled out. And well aware that it would add tension between them, Roman quietly slipped out of the room and got dressed in the hallway, where he met Coma.

“How did it go?”

“It went well. Let’s get to the station.”

His masked doll nodded. “Will we be riding in the cargo hold again?”

“I’m afraid so,” Roman said. “I really wish this weren’t the case, but…”

“That’s fine. I’ll tell Celia.”

Once Roman was ready, he animated his second doll and the three joined in the living room, Casper still in his pocket without life.

Roman ordered a teleporter, and after a short pause, the faint smell of cinnamon reached his nostrils.

He inhaled deeply and a woman took shape, seemingly coming from Roman’s own exhale.

“Breathe with me,” the teleporter said. Roman took a deep breath in.

It felt like he was sucked into the teleporter’s mouth, everything spiraling in the direction of the woman’s face.

He appeared at the Eastern Mane train station, a sense of alarm rising in his chest and then settling as his surroundings became clear.

There was a porter helping to load items under the back of the train, and Roman spotted the two caskets Celia and Coma would be riding in near the man.

“I really wish they had made passports for us,” Celia said. “It’s never great riding like that.”

“I suppose I could have whipped something up…” Roman started to say.

“But maybe it’s better for you to bring less attention to yourself, at least until we get into the country,” Coma said.

“Exactly.”

Roman had the dolls sit on a bench before taking their lives from them. He carried Celia over to one of the caskets and the porter opened it, allowing Roman to gently place her inside.

“I’ve heard of these things,” the porter said with a sly grin. He wore a striped outfit with green trim around the collar, his nametag reading M. Jacques. “Are they yours?”

“Nope, delivery for a client,” Roman told him.

“Man, do they look real,” the man said, licking his lips as he gazed down at Celia’s breasts.

And for just a moment, Roman thought about animating Celia, allowing her to blink once or twice before taking her life away again, just to spook the man.

But he didn’t.

He returned to the bench and brought Coma over, also putting her in a casket. The only difference was that once Coma was sealed up, Roman returned life to her just in case she was needed.

He was glad she wasn’t a human in this regard, not one to be easily frightened by being stuck in such a small, confined place for an extended period of time.

After they were finished packing up his dolls, Roman turned to the platform to see a woman seated at one of the benches.

She wore a trench coat and a green scarf, her hair in a bun and a leather overnight bag on her lap.

He couldn’t help but smile as Nadine waved to him.

Once he reached her, Roman caught a flash of another teleporter at the end of the platform. He looked to see Miranda and Naomi, both wearing normal clothing, Miranda’s purse the same blond color as Jess’s hair.

We’re here, Miranda thought to him. Also, what the hell? Not even some breakfast for me?

Roman ignored her as he greeted Nadine.

You’re serious right now? Okay, be a dick about it. See if I care.

Another message came from her about a minute later as Roman and Nadine were taking their cabin.

You can’t just ignore me.

Sorry, Roman thought back to her. I didn’t think you were hungry and I was running late.

Chapter Eight: Rebels without a Cause

The train was five cars long, with Roman and Nadine taking the first car and Miranda letting Roman know she and her companions had moved to the second.

It was one of the express trains, so there wasn’t going to be an overnight scenario, but Nadine had still arranged for herself and Roman to have one of the executive cabins, which had a bed and a little writing table in front of a small porthole of a window. The decor of the executive cabin was a bit antiquated, especially with its polished wood paneling that had been popular when Roman was a child. Yet it was quaint and comfortable, which counted for something.

Roman sat on the bed, then lay back with his hands behind his head as Nadine spoke to the conductor.

“Funny enough,” she said once the conductor left, “the person I used to work with was a close friend of his family.”

“How did you make that connection?”

“Because I went to that person’s birthday party, and he was there. I remember him.”

“You really can remember faces well, can’t you?” Roman asked as he sat up.

Nadine took a seat on the chair across from them, kicking her legs up. Roman took them into his hands and rested them on his lap. “It’s one of my many known traits.”

“Comfortable?” Roman asked her once she had relaxed even more.

“I guess you could say that. You already took the place I wanted to be on the bed.”

“I can switch with you.”

Nadine smiled. “Can you rub my feet instead?”

“I didn’t think that’s what I was signing up for,” Roman said. He inched forward some so her feet could reach him.

The train began to make noises as it slowly began to move. It wasn’t long before it was sailing right along, the tracks clacking beneath them.

“I really needed this,” Nadine said as Roman continued to knead his fist into the sole of her foot.

“To have your feet massaged?”

“No, to get out of your country. I’m tired of people trying to kill me.” She smiled at Roman, and in that moment light from outside reflected off the red jewel on her necklace, catching Roman’s eye yet again.

“Still wearing the same necklace, huh?”

“Yes, I like it. Do you like it?”

“It’s pretty.”

Nadine yawned. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Why not?”

“Dealing with some things. It wasn’t very hard to get approval to come home, but only because I asked to take a few personal days.”

“Spies get time off?”

“We do, and you should too if you ever decide to officially become one.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“I’ve rarely used time off,” Nadine said matter-of-factly, “and after what happened at the train station with my handler, and with Oscar before, my higher-ups totally understood why I wanted a couple days to relax. I got lucky, you know.”

“In what regard?” Roman asked, faintly recalling the truth of Nadine’s handler. She’d told him what had happened in their dream meeting a few days ago, but he was continuing to pretend he didn’t know anything about it—not that the information would help Miranda in any way.

“My handler never told anyone about her theory that I helped Eli and Lisa escape. If she had, I’m almost certain they wouldn’t have approved for me to take time off. So that’s why I feel as if I’ve gotten lucky, because I have.”

“Sometimes it feels like I’ve gotten lucky; other times it feels like I keep increasing the load of the burden on my shoulders,” Roman said.

“Look at you, poor Roman…”

He smirked at Nadine. “Yeah, poor me. Any word from Eli and Lisa?”

“They’re long gone by this point.”

Roman smirked. “No one is happy about that part.”

“Fuck ’em,” she said with a shrug.

Eventually, a service came around providing tea and biscuits, the tea a bit sweeter than what Roman was used to. He was just about to suggest to Nadine that they indeed take a nap when a terrible screeching sound met his ears.

The train shook as it braked, forward momentum tossing Roman and Nadine to the front end of the cabin.

“What was that?” he asked, immediately starting to take hold of his surroundings.

There was a commotion in the hallway outside. As soon as Nadine was on her feet, she went for her bag and equipped her wrist guard. She triggered her Zero Ring as well, and just for a moment, Roman noticed a sudden dip in his power.

“You can’t use that,” he started to tell her.

“You shouldn’t use your powers here. Let’s at least see what’s going on first, and whatever it is…”

“Right, you take the lead,” Roman said as Nadine slid their cabin door open and moved into the hallway.

There was smoke, peppered by a few muffled screams toward the other end of the train.

A train attendant ran by and Nadine grabbed him, shoving him into a wall.

“What are you doing?” he started to protest.

“What’s going on?” Nadine didn’t let up as she shoved him again.

“Hey!”

“What’s going on? This is your final chance to answer.”

“R-rebel attack. They blew up one of the cars in the middle. That’s what mental messages are saying,” he told her quickly. “Please—I must protect as many passengers as I can!”

There was another explosion, knocking the three of them to the ground. Roman sat up immediately, his ears ringing, something turning over in his stomach.

“We need to handle this,” Nadine said quickly, ignoring the pleas from the train attendant as she advanced toward the next car. She stopped when she realized they were sitting ducks inside the train cars.

Nadine quickly backpedaled, kicking out the emergency exit door.

She peeked once and then jumped down to the ground below, rolling back up to her feet.

Roman didn’t attempt this; rather, he raised the ground to meet him.

“No powers,” Nadine reminded him. “This is going to attract the military. We don’t want them to know you’re here.”

“Right,” Roman said, the gravel smoothing back out.

With all the black smoke in the air, Roman wished he had the power to control the wind so he could get a better look at what was happening.

But Nadine didn’t hesitate.

She pressed forward toward the sound of some commotion.

Roman thought about lifting the ground beneath him so he could stand above the smoke, but he was in Nadine’s country now and trying to behave, well aware of the attention he’d bring to himself if he were to do that.

Are you okay? Miranda’s voice played out somewhere in the depths of his mind.

I am. You?

Fucking rebels. They seem to have blown up the train behind us.

Roman paused, trying to remember which train car his dolls were in. They were on the last train car, which meant…

He almost took off but stopped himself, aware that Coma was animated and could do something if necessary.

But not if the train car had triggered an explosive.

“I need to…”

“Wait,” Nadine said, stopping Roman with her hand. “You hear that?”

Roman heard men groaning, followed by the schwing of what sounded like a blade.

“Be ready for anything,” Nadine said solemnly.

We are seeing to the explosion, he thought to Miranda as they moved toward the sound of the blade.

They’ve escorted us to the front of the train now, following their safety protocols, Miranda thought back to him. I wish they’d let me fillet these rebels’ brains. Damn rebel scum. Teleporters have already started to arrive with troops, but they haven’t engaged any of the rebels yet. There’s too much smoke.

Roman almost lost sight of Nadine, but then he saw a hint of her jacket, his eyes falling back on her as he focused to keep up with the woman.

They came to a dip, some of the smoke cleared out of this particular area, bodies on the ground.

“I think it’s Coma,” Roman said with a sigh of relief once he saw a few severed arms and a severed head.

Nadine paused. “Did you say Coma?”

“I’m pretty sure I told you. If not, she has metal bones now. I also kept her alive in her casket just in case something like this happened.”

“That’s one of the most unconventional statements anyone has ever said to me. We need to get her back into the cargo hold as well, it seems. We can’t let my country find her.”

A man stumbled into the smog, a huge slash mark across his chest. He gasped as a blade bloomed out of his stomach. He was kicked forward, and Roman instinctively called Coma’s name aloud.

“Roman?”

His masked doll came into view, her bladed arms dripping with blood.

“You need to go back now,” he told her.

“Okay,” she said quickly.

“How many did you take out?” Nadine asked.

“Eight,” Coma said, the smoke obscuring the ends of her dress for a moment before passing.

“How are we going to explain this?” Roman asked Nadine.

“We’re not. Or at least, you’re not. Head back to our train. I’ll stay here and say I did this,” she said as she covered her mouth with her green scarf.

“That you did this?” Roman asked. “But how?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll explain my way through it. I have a higher ranking than anyone they’re going to send here, especially on such short notice.”

“Okay,” Roman said, turning the opposite way. He coughed as he waved some of the smoke away, eventually making it to the side of the train.

It didn’t take him very long to reach the side of the train, and once he did he began moving alongside it, careful not to slip on the tracks below. A female conductor spotted Roman and ushered him to the front.

He could tell that Naomi and Miranda weren’t happy, Jess still in her purse form and flung over Miranda’s shoulder.

There was a crowd of passengers gathered alongside them, some of the older members being assisted by train employees. There was also a woman on the ground and a man next to her taking her pulse.

Roman stepped up to the undercover Centralian agents, acting like he didn’t recognize the two of them.

What kind of evacuation strategy is this? Miranda thought to him. They should be calling teleporters to get us out of here. Instead, they’ve gathered us in a group up here, just waiting to get shot at by rebels while their teleporters bring soldiers. How backward is this fucking place?

I don’t have the answer to that question. And trust me, it doesn’t make any sense to me either, he thought back.

They say something called a gana is coming to get us. Some type of vehicle. Heard of it?

Yes, I’ve ridden in one couple times; it’s definitely a treat.

Whatever it is, I hope it gets here soon. Where’s your little Eastern Province girlfriend?

Cleaning up the mess Coma made. My doll cut through quite a few rebels. Anyway, it’s solved. And if anyone comes up here, I’m sure you can handle them.

I can, but I prefer not to.

Just relax, this will all be solved soon.

I’m tense. You sort of left me hanging this morning…

I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you. Next time we’re alone, you can use me however you please, Roman thought, trying not to smile at his own cleverness.

That’s a start, Miranda finally thought back to him.

Chapter Nine: Quick Bite

Roman tried not to look over at Fiona and Miranda, who sat in the row of chairs to his right, Jess-as-a-purse still in Miranda’s lap.

They were in the gana now, the gargantuan wheel spinning above and below them as they traveled toward the capital city of Verne. Roman occasionally looked up to see the inside of the tread moving and realized that like most things, it was less mesmerizing than it had been the first time he’d witnessed it.

Nadine had somehow cleaned everything up back at the attack site, just as she said she would, but she hadn’t revealed to Roman how she had done it.

Roman didn’t pry.

They’d had enough secrets between them. What was one more added to the stack?

A toddler hopped down from his chair and ran toward the window. He smacked his head against the glass and fell backward, letting out a shrill of laughter and shock.

“Poor thing,” Nadine said under her breath.

What an idiot, Miranda thought to Roman.

He just wants to be free, Roman thought back to her.

You need to find out where we’re going exactly, as in what hotel we’re staying at. If you can figure out a way to ask her, do it. I would check myself, but…

No, he thought back to the telepath. She’ll know if someone’s trying to pry and it will blow our cover.

Okay, I guess I’ll just watch the little fucker lick the glass now.

Roman turned back to the toddler to see he was indeed licking the glass, his exhausted mother not paying attention to him.

Just behave. I’ll get as much information as I can and relay it to you once I know where we’re staying and what our agenda is.

You promised me some alone time.

Patience, patience. I don’t how easy it will be over here, but if we can manage it, it will happen.

“Are you all right?” Nadine asked Roman, looking over to him.

“Sorry, just remembering what happened back there. Had the train been just a little bit slower, it would have—or I guess I should say it could have exploded beneath our cabin.”

“It could have,” Nadine said.

“And I don’t think I’m fast enough with my powers to do anything about an explosion like that, especially one so sudden, and especially if it came from beneath us.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to be. But we made it, and that’s all that matters.”

“Where are we staying anyway?” Roman asked Nadine. He grinned at her. “I’m sort of just trusting you to handle everything.”

“I would be expecting the same from you if we were visiting your country and I didn’t already know my way around. To answer your question, we’re staying at a hotel near the downtown research area, not far from Eastern University. There are several hubs of research in my country, Brattle being one of them, Verne the other. At least those are the largest ones, where universities are.”

“I see. Are we planning on visiting a university?”

Nadine looked straight ahead. “We can discuss everything later.”

“Yeah, we have plenty of time.”

He didn’t say much more as they continued toward Verne, their ride a bit bumpy. Eventually, the vehicle began to slow, and people began lining up at the exit once it came to a stop.

This seemed rather futile to Roman, considering everyone would eventually get off, but the Easterners were serious about queuing. Roman and Nadine were somewhere at the back, Miranda and Naomi behind them.

He had already relayed the message as to the general vicinity of where they would be staying to Miranda, the telepath trying to be flirty with Roman but Roman more or less ignoring her.

He had Miranda where he wanted her; he planned to keep her there.

Once they were off the gana, Roman and Nadine waited for the cargo to be unloaded as people moved quietly through the station behind them. It was an eerie quiet, not like many of the stations in Centralia, and every time Roman looked back he got the sense that someone was watching him.

The two caskets were placed in front of Roman, the porter asking if they had already arranged teleportation.

“We have,” Nadine said, handing the man a little money. “Thank you.”

Once the porter was gone, Roman simply knocked on one of the coffins to let Coma know it was safe to come out now.

A portly woman with frazzled hair happened to see Coma press her way out of the wooden box, and her only reaction was to gawk and look away, pretending she hadn’t just witnessed something incredibly odd.

Coma dusted off her dress and then went about fixing her mask while Roman worked on Celia’s casket. He animated her, the beautiful doll blinking her eyes open and smiling at him.

“We’re here,” she said softly.

“That we are,” he said as he helped her out of the casket.

It wasn’t long before a teleporter appeared, emerging from a pink explosion of glitter.

“That was beautiful, truly original,” Celia told him, and the man gave her a playful smirk as the four of them disappeared in another puff of pink glitter.

They arrived in front of a hotel that was several stories tall, no moniker in sight. There were no balconies on the hotel and its lines were clean, only a parapet at the top giving it character. It was nothing like the buildings a few blocks away, which nearly resembled the height of the buildings in Centralia.

“I thought…” Roman started to say after the teleporter had left.

“That my country is poor?” Nadine asked curtly.

“That’s not how I was going to frame it, but those buildings are all brand new. They look even better than most of the buildings in Centralia.”

“They’re part of Eastern University. The universities and the military are the most important things here. Do they remind you of home?” She stepped up to him and looked at the skyscrapers on the horizon, several of them bathed in pink and purple colors from the setting sun.

“It definitely does. Did the architects study in Centralia?”

“Probably,” Nadine said as she turned to the hotel’s entrance.

Roman took another look around before joining her and saw there was a restaurant across the street, which was much narrower than the streets he was used to in Centralia. He looked for signs that a trolley would share the street with pedestrians but couldn’t find any aside from the sound of a trolley in the distance, on the other side of the hotel. He also noticed that many of the buildings had window trims resembling the petals of a flower. Whatever they were made of, they were expertly carved.

“I really would like to explore,” Celia said. “What about you?”

“That’s not why we’re here,” Roman told her.

“Maybe we’ll be able to step out for a little while,” Coma said.

“You have the bug too?”

“Bug?” his combat doll asked him, looking at Roman curiously with her big red eyes.

“The bug to explore. Not an actual bug.”

“I’m glad we don’t have bugs,” Celia said with a disgusted look on her face. “Although I thought we were going to see some in the Western Province, it turned out that most of the places we went weren’t that dirty. Oh, what am I saying? I spent most of the time at our temporary home.”

“The place had quite a view, though,” Roman said.

Celia nodded, a fond expression taking shape on her face. “It did. When you guys went out, and after I finished cleaning and preparing food for later meals, I would sit in front of the window and just stare out, wondering what people were doing. Have you ever done that?”

“Roman,” Nadine said, joining him again.

“Sorry, having a conversation.”

“We can have a conversation inside our hotel room,” Nadine told him. “I’m not saying that…” Her voice lowered. “We’re safe here, but it’s just best to get indoors when you can. There’s always someone listening.”

It was then that Roman noticed the streets were mostly empty, the hustle and bustle he was used to in Centralia practically nonexistent.

He was about to comment on it when Nadine hooked her arm in his, leading him up the steps to the entrance of the hotel.

The lobby wasn’t anything to write home about, the sofas a bit shabby, the art on the wall and the general decor looking like it needed a good updating.

Reminding Roman of their cabin back in the train, the clerk’s station was completely crafted from wood. The back paneling had been polished to a fine sheen, evidence that the country took pride in their lumber industry.

A thin woman with a hooked nose checked them in, providing a pair of keys to Nadine.

They took the stairs, the dolls following behind, Roman not at all worried that the receptionist might have thought his little entourage strange.

He considered activating Casper, then decided to wait until they got to the room and settled in before unleashing her wildness onto the world.

They finally reached their floor. Nadine opened their door, revealing an L-shaped room with a pair of beds pressed against the wall. It was much larger than hotel rooms back in Centralia, where space was at a premium.

Where Roman would have assumed a floor-to-ceiling window would have been nice, there was simply a wall with a single window on it, which looked like it would let in very little light. The place was a bit yellow, but the wooden floors were nice and polished, everything clean. There was also a spread of snacks along with two bottles of fermented cider on the nightstand.

“Welcome home,” Nadine said as she sat on one of the beds.

“And our plan for tonight?” Roman asked, cutting right to the chase.

“Our plan for tonight is to lie low.”

Nadine brought her finger to her lips as she looked around the room. Roman was quiet as she stood, the Eastern spy checking around for what he assumed was surveillance equipment.

He figured this would take her just a few moments, but it ended up taking Nadine a good thirty minutes. Roman eventually lay on the bed, his hands behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling, remembering the crack that had been on the ceiling for an entire month when his power had been stripped from him.

What a time.

He was starting to doze off when Nadine spoke. “We’re good. As I said, let’s lie low and perhaps have food delivered. It’ll be better this way.”

Roman smiled at her. “Why do I get the feeling you aren’t telling me something?”

“Because I’m always not telling you something,” she said as she lay down on the other bed.

For their parts, Celia and Coma still stood, Celia eventually walking around the room and tidying things up.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to prepare something?” she asked.

“No, just relax,” Nadine told the red-haired doll. She patted a hand on her bed. “Sit next to me, take a break. It’s been a long day.”

Chapter Ten: Ramping up Production

Nadine was just about to suggest they go out for food when a mental message came in, letting her know they were ready for her to tour the facility.

She looked over at Roman, who was still lying on the second bed, his hands behind his head.

“I have to go,” she said suddenly, startling Celia, who sat on the corner of Nadine’s bed.

Coma, who stood near the door, glanced at Nadine and then returned her gaze to Roman.

“Go where?” Roman asked.

“I didn’t think they’d take my request seriously, but they have,” she said.

“Who?”

“My government. I put in a request to tour the facility where they’re trying to replicate your power. I figured they’d ignore it and send me a rep to meet with or something, but they’ve approved it and a teleporter will be here shortly.”

Nadine turned to the restroom, where she planned to freshen up.

“So that’s it? You’re going to just leave me here?” Roman asked, but something about the tone of his voice told her he wasn’t too bothered by this fact.

“I can have food delivered.”

“I’d prefer to go out,” he said.

“I’m sure you would,” Nadine called from the bathroom. “You need to be careful, though. This place isn’t like Centralia.”

“How long will you be gone?” Roman asked, waving her concern away.

“I would say two hours, but it could be more. I’d prefer if you stayed here.”

Nadine exited the bathroom to see Roman using his power to lift himself from the bed.

“That was… inventive,” she said with a smirk.

“I didn’t feel like standing. And you know I’m going to go out, right? At least for a walk. I need to take Casper for a walk.”

“She’s not a dog,” Nadine reminded him.

“I know, but she gets antsy if I leave her deanimated for too long. And by antsy I mean bitchy.”

Nadine took a step closer to Roman, attempting to hide a look of concern with a short nod. “As I said, be safe; I’d suggest not being out too late.”

A ring of fire appeared in an open corner of the room.

As the ring grew, the form of a man took shape, the flames now a halo around his head. The crown of fire lowered onto his skull, his eyes glowing for a moment.

“Nadine Unders?” he asked, bowing his head slightly.

“I’ll be back,” Nadine told Roman as she brushed past him, lightly touching his chest.

“Sure.”

The halo of fire reappeared over the man’s head as Nadine stepped up to him.

From there it began spiraling down both of their bodies, the two vanishing.

They reappeared in an authorized government teleportation zone. The building before them was cast in black, two stories tall, and protected by a thick blast wall with razor wire at the top. There were also power nullification stations set up, each able to handle a ten-foot radius. Nadine assumed there were other measures taken to prevent exemplars from infiltrating the facility, but most of these weren’t exactly visible.

A man with a sharp goatee waited for Nadine. He wore a lab coat over a simplified military uniform, and after a quick greeting, he motioned for Nadine to follow him.

“And how has your prototype been?” he asked as they entered the building, his polished leather shoes clacking against the marble floor.

“Wonderful,” Nadine said, instinctively placing her hand on her necklace. “I was lucky to be able to grab it after that last attack.”

The man frowned. “Yes, it is sad to know what happened to your handler. Lydia, was it?”

“Yes, Lydia. She really was starting to rub off on me,” Nadine lied.

“That’s most unfortunate. Have they found a replacement yet?”

“Not yet,” Nadine said as they came into a large training room, the walls made of thickened concrete with an additional coating on them to contain elemental powers.

There were two female scientists waiting in the room, one clearly a telepath. Nadine went ahead and let the woman scrape through her mind, keeping to surface thoughts.

“Please, change,” the male scientist said with a grunt. “We have prepared clothing for you.”

One of the female scientists motioned to a door across from them. Nadine went to the room to find a set of training clothes laid out on a wooden table. Once she’d changed, she took a look at herself in the single mirror provided, smoothing her hands over her hips.

Her eyes settled on her necklace. She tapped it twice, activating it before returning to the testing room.

“We’d like to see what you can do, considering you have worked with an exemplar who had this precise power,” the male scientist said. He stepped aside, indicating where she should practice.

“Got it.” Nadine changed her focus to the concrete floor directly beneath her.

It began to quake, and once she got hold of it, Nadine was able to glide it over to the scientists and then back to her. She got on top of the platform this time, performing the gesture yet again. Getting more comfortable, she stepped off the roving hunk of building material and formed it into a spike, spiraling its tip.

“What about other substances?” one of the female scientists asked. She produced a flame in one hand and an oscillating ball of ice in the other, clearly a multi-elementalist.

Nadine tried to take the fireball and was unable to. She then focused on the ball of ice. It floated over to her and she raised it higher into the air, shattering it.

“And Roman Martin could control fire, correct?” the male scientist asked.

Nadine nodded. “And water. I think everything but wind.”

The teleporter from earlier appeared with a cage, flames dissipating off his head.

There was a white rabbit with red eyes inside the cage, the smell of hay reaching Nadine’s nostrils.

“Please,” the male scientist said once the teleporter was gone.

“Where would you like me to begin?” Nadine asked carefully.

“Don’t kill it yet. See if you can control it.”

Nadine turned her hand to the rabbit. As she focused on it, she began to notice a faint heartbeat. At first, she assumed it was her own heartbeat, that she had quieted herself enough to feel it. But no, it was too fast.

There was no way her heart was beating that quickly.

But she had to be sure.

As she concentrated on the caged rabbit, Nadine placed her hand on her chest and noticed it was indeed the rabbit’s heart she was sensing.

The rabbit began to run in circles, panicking. Nadine then lowered the heart rate and the rabbit grew sleepy before falling to its side.

“Can you animate its bones?” asked the female scientist Nadine assumed was a telepath.

“Do you really want to see that?”

The woman nodded.

“It’s not pleasant,” Nadine warned them as she attempted to animate the rabbit’s bones. Once she felt like she had a hold on its bone structure, she twitched her hand to the side, hoping to tear the bones out of its body.

The rabbit made a whimpering sound, its body splaying out as bones tore from it, white fur now covered with blood.

Nadine lowered her hand. “Like I told you, gruesome.”

The teleporter appeared with another caged rabbit.

And so it went for the next hour, Nadine cycling through things she’d seen Roman do as the scientists took notes and made other suggestions. She was by no means as powerful as Roman with her necklace, but it was surprising what the techs of her country had created and how closely it resembled his power.

She wondered why they hadn’t worked as hard on replicating a way to heal people, but Nadine knew better than to ask this question. When it came to an instrument of death versus an instrument of healing, her country was the type to choose death.

Eventually, they told Nadine to get changed, that they wanted to show her something.

Once she was back in her normal clothing, the three scientists led Nadine down a long corridor to a larger room that had about fifteen people assembling jewelry.

“Are those…” Nadine gulped, seeing metal box after metal box of animating necklaces. A man gently placed a necklace that matched Nadine’s into a metal box as they spoke.

“They are,” the male scientist said.

“You’re already manufacturing them without testing?”

“We’ve tested them plenty.”

“Then what was I for?” Nadine asked.

“You have experienced the exemplar’s power firsthand; we wanted to see what you are capable of,” he told her, the two female scientists nodding in agreement. “Anyway, we thought you’d like to see this. I’m sure there will be more in a briefing soon, but we expect to be operational with the goal of reaching a thousand users in a week. I don’t know when these things will roll out, but…” He smiled at her. “Just read the briefing when it comes to you.”

“That was a pretty way to teleport,” Celia said once Nadine’s teleporter had left.

“It really was,” Roman said as he slipped into his jacket.

“And we’re really going out?” the sweet doll asked.

“I was serious about being hungry.” Roman turned to her, giving her a look that was meant to suggest he had other reasons for going out. Celia picked up on it, or at least she understood that she shouldn’t ask any more questions for now.

Roman joined Coma at the door, and they were just about to leave when Celia remembered they’d need a key. She took the spare from the nightstand and Roman placed it in his pocket.

“About time,” Casper called out as soon as they stepped into the hallway, the tiny doll newly activated. “We’re in the East, right? It smells like oppression over here.”

“You can’t smell,” he reminded the tiny doll.

“Whatever,” Casper grumbled. “Where are we going anyway?”

“Casper, no questions or I’ll deactivate you. Hey!” Roman said when she kicked him. “Behave.”

“Okay, fine, but…”

“But?” Roman asked as they came down the stairs.

“I hate behaving.”

The clerk looked up from her desk as the four of them stepped into the lobby of the hotel. She glanced back down at whatever she was reading, an eerie silence spreading toward Roman. He cleared his throat; the woman didn’t make eye contact, intensely focused on what she was doing.

“All right, then,” Roman said under his breath as he stepped outside.

It was a frigid night, much colder than Roman was expecting it to be.

He popped the collar on his jacket and stuck his hands into his pockets. After getting comfortable, he looked at his dolls, neither of whom were affected by the weather.

“Looks like someone should have packed a sweater,” Casper said.

“You aren’t wrong,” Roman told her. “But maybe I’ll warm up if we can get some food.”

“Do you even have any money?”

Roman nodded, recalling that the package with his fake passports had also included an envelope of cash. If he got low on funds, which he didn’t foresee happening, he would simply counterfeit more money.

“Mama likes,” Casper said, her voice tinged in sarcasm. “Maybe you can get us some new clothing over here. I’m so sick of seeing Coma in a mask and a black dress. Doesn’t she have anything else? Even Celia switches it up sometimes.”

“Would you like different clothing?” Roman asked his combat doll as they made their way down the street.

“No.”

“What she said,” he relayed to Casper.

“You know, of all the people to animate me, it had to be your weird ass,” she said with a playful sigh. “I guess that is my fate in life.”

As he had learned to do with his tiniest creation, Roman ignored her. They eventually came to a wide boulevard, a median in its center lined with trees, most of which were either turning brown or already missing their leaves. A trolley moved along the right side of the boulevard, the left side currently cleared for walking.

There were a few couples meandering about, a group in military uniforms, a trio Roman assumed were college students considering they were all jogging together and wearing matching outfits, as well as the occasional merchant pushing a cart across the street or sweeping dust away from the front of their store.

As Roman had noticed earlier, there weren’t a lot of people on the streets, nothing like his home country.

The stores that lined the streets were vastly different than what he was used to in Centralia. True, there were older buildings in Centralia with new stores and boutique clothing shops built directly next to them. And occasionally, the more antiquated structures were carved out to provide a modern feel with high ceilings and lots of steel and glass, with an equal amount of brick on some of the inner walls.

But Verne was nothing like that.

While the buildings were pressed together in a way that reminded Roman of the blockhouses in a few of Centralia’s more established districts, nothing had been refurbished, and if there had been renovations, they’d been made to resemble the buildings’ original architecture. Many of the stores looked like they were third or fourth generation even, family-run places with loyal customer bases. No need to renovate, nothing to change up, no reason to make the storefront look nicer.

Then it occurred to Roman that perhaps it was a monetary thing, that maybe the local businesses wanted to change things up but weren’t able due to financial concerns.

It made sense. The Eastern Province was poor.

An exemplar flew overhead. Roman watched the man go by, likely a Type III Class D, a police unit. The police officer turned a corner and was gone.

The smell of fried dough and spices met Roman’s nostrils. He gravitated to a roadside food stand selling greens and mashed potatoes that had been fried into flat patties.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to eat that,” Casper started to say.

“It’s food,” Roman told her before placing his order. “You wouldn’t know anything about it.”

The man gave Roman a wooden plate filled with fried potatoes, a marinated slice of chicken garnished with slivers of firm cabbage, and sautéed spinach.

Plate in hand, Roman took a seat at the table next to the food stand.

Coma was on guard as always, her arms loose at her sides as she took a position behind Roman. Celia sat in front of him, crossing one leg over the other.

“Would you like me to help you cut your food?” she asked.

“Oh, please,” Casper said, trying not to laugh. “Can you feed him too?”

“If he wants me to,” Celia said with a smile.

“I can feed myself,” Roman told both of them. Casper climbed out of his pocket and hopped down onto the table, where she began pacing back and forth.

“We have to get out of here. This place is so boring.”

“We are out,” Roman told her after he’d taken his first bite of the fried potatoes. “Not out of the country, but at least we’re out of our hotel.”

“You know what I mean. This is the capital city, right?”

He nodded. The potato patty was good, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. The spice had an aftershock to it, the flavor finally reaching Roman’s nostrils after he’d swallowed his second bite.

“There’s got to be a disco somewhere, or a really cool bar, or a cosplay café. I know how you like to have your girls cosplay for you.”

“You don’t know that,” Roman told Casper.

“I’d love to cosplay for you,” Celia told Roman. “Maybe I can even cosplay as Coma.”

Casper started laughing. “Everything you say both amuses me and annoys me at the same time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Celia told the tiny doll, never once raising her voice at Casper.

As Casper and Celia continued to speak, Roman sent a mental message to Miranda.

Miranda. Can you hear me?

I believe we’re near your hotel. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have received this message, the telepath responded almost instantly. Also, I don’t hear you. That’s a weird way to phrase that. Where are you?

I needed to grab some food. Nadine stepped out to check on something. I should have some information soon.

And what hotel are you staying at?

Roman thought about this for a moment before replying. I wish I knew the name of the place. It’s unmarked. But I can show it to you. Can you find me?

I don’t have an echolocation ability, so no.

I’m on the main boulevard, which has a trolley running on it. There’s a median and some trees.

That’s a terrible description.

Roman looked around, trying to find a street name. When he couldn’t, he went back to the man running the roadside food stand and asked him where they were.

“Are you asking for teleportation reasons? Or just in general?” the food stand owner asked in a grumpy voice.

“Let me find out,” he said as he thought another message to Miranda.

Are you going to teleport here?

For me to arrange teleportation will mean I have to get back in touch with the embassy and use their private service.

Well, do you want to meet or not?

Just find out where you are, Roman.

“Not for teleportation reasons. Just generally.”

“This is Verne Street,” the man said. “That building over there used to be the botanical gardens. So people just call it Verne and Botanical, but it’s really Verne and State Street.”

Verne and State Street, near the botanical gardens, Roman thought back to Miranda.

“Thanks,” he told the man as he moved back toward his seat.

Let me check… Actually, our hotel is just a block from there, believe it or not.

I believe it, Roman thought back to her.

We’ll be there in a moment. Make sure no one is watching you.

I don’t think anyone is watching me; I haven’t felt any telepath or anything.

You wouldn’t feel the good ones.

I’m not so sure about that. I felt you, Roman thought back to her, smiling at the double meaning of the statement.

Don’t flatter yourself. We’re on our way.

Roman was just finishing his food when Miranda and Naomi walked up.

Celia stood, allowing Naomi to sit in front of Roman while Miranda ordered food, a disgusted look on her face as she did.

“Naomi,” Roman said.

“We haven’t spoken much, have we?” asked the woman with dark purple skin. Rather than her hair being slicked back, it was parted to the side this time, and she almost resembled a boy.

“We really haven’t. I’m Roman.”

“We’ve met,” she reminded him.

“Yeah,” he said, recalling that he had introduced himself to her once or twice by this point. “What’s your power, anyway? You know what I’m capable of.”

“Are you always this forthright with the opposite sex?” she asked, smiling with just the left side of her face.

“I just want to know what I’m working with.”

“We are working together. We are following and tracking you. You aren’t an agent,” Naomi said.

“Could have fooled me.”

“I’m sure it could have.”

Roman shrugged. “I’m the best shot you have at figuring out what’s going on here, and what they’ve learned from my powers.”

He didn’t know if this was actually the case; Roman was merely a cog in the machine of intelligence and disinformation, and he was self-aware enough to know the Centralian government might be holding more cards than he had originally assumed.

But he went with this line of reasoning anyway.

“Perhaps,” Naomi said as Miranda came to the table with a wooden plate stacked with fried potato patties.

“Dinner is served,” she said, still with a disgusted look on her face as she slid the plate onto the table. She looked around for a chair, and when one didn’t present itself, she glanced down at her purse. “Jess?”

When she was sure no one was watching, Miranda set the purse on the ground, the designer handbag instantly morphing into a chair.

“She’s okay with you sitting on her?” Roman asked.

“We’re professionals,” Miranda said with a smug grin.

She hates it, the telepath thought to Roman.

I figured as much. But you like it, don’t you?

I’d rather be sitting on you. Preferably your face.

Would you? Roman thought back to her. I didn’t think I made a very good chair.

You are good enough, and sometimes it’s the best a telepath can do.

“How is your hotel?” Roman asked, trying not to smirk at Miranda’s last statement.

He still knew he needed to play coy with her, that the more he led her on, the more relaxed she would be around him, not digging too deeply into his head.

“It’s dingy and subpar. We’ve already had to switch rooms twice,” Miranda informed them. “There was water dripping in the first room. And the second room had a funky smell to it.”

Naomi nodded. “It smelled like cheese. But it was stronger than cheese. I don’t know.”

“It smelled like the inside of a corpse’s ass,” Miranda said bluntly.

“I wouldn’t know what that smelled like,” Roman told her. “Moving on, Nadine is out at the moment and I expect she’ll be back sooner than later. We aren’t very far from here. Just up the street,” Roman said, pointing to the south and motioning toward the right. “There’s a gray building. It’s taller than the other buildings. There’s a lot of gray buildings, actually, but this was the tallest one. And it’s a hotel.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see a name for the hotel?” Miranda asked. “Who am I kidding? They don’t name things here like they do in Centralia. You know, I used to get annoyed with how many monikers and glitzy signs there were in Centralia, but then I visited some of the other shitholes in this world and have come to the conclusion I prefer the lights and advertisements. It makes things easier to navigate.”

“There is a calmness to this place as well,” Roman said, noticing that Celia was now talking to the owner of the food truck, the man happy to explain to her how he made his potatoes. Roman’s combat doll was still behind them, standing guard as always.

“And no one says hi to me?” Casper asked, startling Roman. She had been quiet for a moment, and he’d actually forgotten she was there.

Naomi looked down at the tiny doll, who stood on the table with her hands at her sides. “Hi.”

“You never answered his question,” Casper reminded the exemplar. “What’s your power?”

“It’s a power you wouldn’t understand, dear,” Naomi told Casper.

“Oh, fuck off,” Casper said, her arm morphing into a blade. “I’m sure you read the report about what I did in the West. Care to try me?”

“Let’s not and say we did,” Roman said as he deactivated the tiny doll. He then realized her arm was still morphed into a blade. He returned life to Casper, the doll suddenly angry. “Don’t take my power away!” she said, pointing her bladed arm at Roman.

“Don’t threaten people, and put the blades away. We’re not trying to draw attention to ourselves.”

Casper wagged her tongue at him. “Roman, think about what you just said. You’re sitting here at this crappy little roadside restaurant with a woman in a maid outfit standing guard next to you. Seated before you is a lady with purple skin, and next to her is this crazy bitch with blue hair, sitting on a chair that wasn’t here just moments ago. That’s not to mention Celia over there flirting with the owner of the food stand.”

“Crazy bitch?” Miranda said, her eyes narrowing on Casper.

“She’s not wrong,” Naomi said. “Not about you, Miranda, but about saying we’re easy targets out here. Let’s wrap this up. As soon as you know more, Roman, I want you to relay the information to Miranda.”

“Will do.”

“We also need to know if you’re planning to do something. We have to make sure things go through the proper chain of command.”

“How am I supposed to delay her if she asks me to do something that needs to go through an approval process?”

Naomi considered this for a moment. “We should at least try,” she finally told Roman, still not too keen on eating the fried mashed potato patties. Miranda had started on one, picking away at the sides while sticking mostly to the greens on the plate.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Roman said. “I’m assuming that whatever information she comes back with will dictate how we proceed. But it is getting late, so maybe we won’t have to proceed tonight.”

“Hopefully, we can go back to Centralia tomorrow,” Miranda said. “I miss it already.”

“Yeah, I’m hoping for the same,” Roman told her. “So keep all channels open. Be ready to act, and be ready to get approval for me. You guys know how much I like following the rules.”

Jess the chair scooted a bit, her legs scraping against the pavement.

“What she said,” Miranda told Roman.

“In all seriousness, don’t do anything that…” Naomi paused, considering how she should frame what she wanted to say.

“I’ll try not to,” Roman told her.

Chapter Eleven: Trolley

Margo cast her hand at the wall, spikes tearing from it and pressing into the body of a man.

He let out a yelp, his Centralian Intelligence Agency outfit tightening as the spikes pressed through his body. The protrusions were made of a combination of brick and concrete, which Margo knew made it even more painful with their abrasive surfaces.

“How long have you been following me?” she asked the man in an innocent voice.

She was in an alley somewhere near the 33rd Street Station with Paris the doll, where she’d been planning to take refuge in an old safe house she knew of when she’d sensed the presence.

The former Western Province spy had been tailed enough times to know when there was someone following her.

“I’m now controlling the veins in your body,” Margo told the man, his eyes bulging, spit dripping from his chin. “If you try to teleport away, it will kill you.”

The man cried out.

“I can stop the pain, but I need to know something before I do.”

“What?” he asked.

“Where is Roman Martin?”

“I don’t even know who that is, lady,” he blurted out.

Paris came beside Margo and placed a hand at her waist. “I want to play before you kill him,” she said.

“I know you do, dear, but now is not the time to play with our toys.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the man managed to ask.

He was growing more delirious with each passing moment, his form wavering between solid and invisible. It occurred to Margo that someone, a very cruel someone, had perhaps sent this man for the sole purpose of being caught. She didn’t know exactly who would have done it or what their intention was, but there was something about his amateur stalking ability that told her he hadn’t trained for very long.

And he was quite young, likely no older than his mid-twenties, his youth soon to be cut short.

“Where is he?” Margo asked.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. Tell me where he is, and I’ll let you go. You know how this works.”

“But…” The man started to sob, realizing that not only was he about to die, he was going to die in a most excruciating way. This caused him to vomit.

“Gross,” Paris the doll said. “I don’t want to play with him anymore.”

“I agree. We’ll make this fast.”

“Where am I going to find him?” Margo asked. “This is the last time you’ll hear this question.”

The man shook his head, eyes darting left as he discovered he could no longer hear from his left ear. Margo had lifted his earlobe and pressed it into his earhole, sealing it up, taking control of the man’s skin in doing so.

“Warehouse, 77th and 34th Street. That’s all I know,” he managed to say. “I swear. I was part of the meeting. They said they were going to take them there, that I had to check on you first. I really don’t even know who you are…”

“Thanks,” Margo told him as she snapped his neck, the man going limp, instantly dead.

“I suppose we need to take a trip,” she told Paris.

“Where are we going, dear?”

“It sounds like we're walking straight into a trap. They sent this poor fellow to bait me. I wonder what he did to deserve this fate. Agents that can turn invisible are a dime a dozen; perhaps he was the worst of his group. There really is no telling.”

Margo exited the alley, her doll catching up with her. They looped their hands together and were about a block away when a different man turned into the alley to take the trash out.

Margo heard his scream as they approached the trolley station.

“He sure got a surprise, didn’t he?”

“That’s right,” she told Paris.

After checking the posted trolley map to make sure she knew where she was going, Margo took the trolley that would get her to 75th and 33rd, which was close enough. It was a bit windy out, cold, a nice night for a walk.

Especially if she was walking into a trap.

She didn’t pay to use the trolley; with the snap of her finger, Margo simply broke the turnstile and stepped up, making her way to a cabin with an old man sitting in the corner, leafing through a newspaper.

He glanced up at Margo and Paris, grunted, and returned his focus to his newspaper.

“Should we play with him?” Paris asked as she took a seat next to Margo. The sex doll was wearing a ruffled dress Margo had stolen from a shop a few hours earlier. It had been rather humorous, at least to Margo, to see the mannequin suddenly running out of the shop still wearing the elaborate dress, the shop owner chasing it until he ran out of breath.

The dress also revealed a good amount of cleavage, which Margo liked, and the old man in the corner of the trolley took a few sidelong glances at the two of them.

Margo smiled over at him.

The trolley made it to the next station, continuing toward 75th Street.

At one point, a mother got on with a baby strapped to her chest. She was also holding a young boy’s hand, an exhausted look on her face.

Paris turned to them. “What’s your daughter’s name?” she asked the mother.

“I’m sorry?”

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

The woman nodded. “Her name is Green.”

“That’s a pretty name,” Margo said. “I used to have a green eye and a blue eye,” she told the baby, even though she was too young to comprehend what Margo was saying to her.

“Why?” asked the boy, who was old enough to speak.

The lights in the trolley flickered off and on as it hit a rough patch on the track.

“Just because,” Margo said.

“He’s cute too,” Paris added. “A little chubby, but I like chubby cheeks. What’s his name?”

“Nice to meet you both; this is our stop,” the woman told them when the trolley slowed, her motherly instinct kicking in as she grabbed her son’s hand and checked on her daughter.

“But Mom, our home is the next… I think,” the boy said as she dragged him toward the door.

“It looks like we scared them off,” Paris told Margo after they were gone.

“You two aren’t scary,” the old man with the newspaper said from his corner.

“Is that so?” Margo asked, turning to him.

“Just two young ladies on the train. Beautiful ladies, I might add. Remind me of my daughters. Well, they’re a bit heavier than the two of you, but they eat well, and that’s a good thing.”

Margo and Paris exchanged glances.

“I don’t know,” Margo said as she looked at her own reflection in her beautiful doll’s eyes. “The night is young.”

“So are we, apparently,” Paris said with a snicker.

The trolley came to a stop again and the older man stood, waving to the two of them before stepping off.

“Too bad,” Paris said with a pout, the doll turning to watch the man make his way onto the platform.

“He really did get lucky, didn’t he? I guess he lives to see his fat daughters another day.”

“I guess.”

The doors shut.

“What’s wrong?”

“We should get a baby,” Paris said. “That would be fun.”

“A baby?” Margo shrugged. “I don’t know; babies are a lot of work. But if you really want one…”

“I really do,” Paris said, moving in to kiss Margo. The two continued to kiss as the trolley started up again, the old man pausing to watch them from the platform.

“We’ll see about it,” Margo finally said.

She thought about killing the older man as the trolley started to speed away, but decided to save her energy.

There was no telling what they were about to be up against.

Chapter Twelve: Change of Plans

Roman watched as needles began to rise from the carpet in his hotel room. They swirled together, stacking on top of one another as they formed two distinct bodies.

Nadine nodded to the fit female teleporter, who wore emerald-green government-approved clothing. The woman said goodbye and thousands upon thousands of needles fell to the floor before being sucked away through a hole in the ground.

“Welcome back,” Celia told Nadine, the doll sweeping some of her red hair off her forehead. “Would you like some tea? I would love to make you some tea.”

Roman’s doll stood near the small kitchenette adjacent to the bathroom. She looked eager to do something, her demeanor the exact opposite of Coma, who had taken a position near the door, her arms crossed in front of her body.

Casper was on the nightstand, lifeless, the tiny doll having grown on Roman’s nerves since they’d arrived back at the hotel.

“I’m fine, but thank you,” Nadine told Celia.

Roman, who had been lying on the bed, was sitting up now, his eyes focused on a small metal case in Nadine’s hands. “Do I need to ask?”

Nadine shook her head. “This is it,” she said as she sat on the bed across from him.

She opened the case and showed Roman a silver tiara resting on a black velvet cushion.

“That’s it?” Roman asked, quickly looking from the tiara to Nadine’s gleaming necklace before finally settling on her face.

“Still a prototype,” she told him. “But they’ve already started on their final tweaks before putting it into production.”

“Have you tested it out?”

“I sure have. Would you like to see it in action?”

“Definitely. How did you even get a copy?”

“They wanted me to play around with it considering my past—our past,” she said as she took the tiara out of its case. “It’s not supposed to leave the country, though. That’s another thing I should tell you: because of the rebel attack on the train, it’s going to take them an additional day to bring passengers that have pre-purchased tickets. This news hasn’t yet been publicized, but it will be tomorrow. There’s going to be a lot of unhappy people. Luckily, I already have tickets for us to leave two days from now. But we can discuss those details later. Let’s just check this out for now.”

“Yes, let’s,” Roman said as the two of them moved over to the table near the small window. Roman took a few sheets of stationery and set them down while Nadine put the tiara on.

“How does it activate?”

“Like this,” she said as she ran her hand over one of the gemstones, which flashed blue.

“This should be interesting,” Celia said, joining them at the table.

Nadine focused on the piece of paper as she nonchalantly placed her hand just below her neck, tapping her fingers twice.

“It’s not working,” Roman said.

“Give it a second,” she told him as she dropped her hand over the piece of paper.

Nadine curled her fingers; the piece of paper bulged like a mushroom quickly growing out of a rotten tree trunk. She was able to flatten the paper again, then followed this by performing the same gesture to two pieces at once.

“Can you do something larger?”

Nadine focused on the chair, its legs starting to splay outward.

“Has it been tested on more organic objects? Like…”

“Other people?”

Roman nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

“I’m sure it has. They said this one was one of the earlier models, so it can only do limited things. But to be honest with you, I still can’t believe they did it.”

“It was bound to happen…”

Nadine swallowed hard. “We have to destroy it,” she told Roman, turning to him suddenly.

“Destroy the tiara?”

“No, think larger,” the Eastern spy said as she deactivated the device. “We need to destroy the facility that’s making them. If we do that, we can at least postpone their production for a while. There’s more. They’re planning on giving them to the rebels at the border. Imagine if the rebels are able to utilize this kind of technology.”

“It would push Centralia and the Eastern Province to war,” Roman surmised.

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

“But destroy it? This isn’t why I came here; I’m just supposed to get information and then go back to Centralia and go after Margo,” Roman lied.

“I used to be more patriotic,” Nadine said with disdain. “But seeing this, and knowing exactly what it’s capable of and what it would look like in the hands of our military… Now imagine if my government gives it to the rebels. It’s just too much. We have a chance to do something here, to save the world in a way, as cheesy as that sounds.”

“So…” Roman bobbed his head left and right, considering what she had said. “We need to bring down the facility then?”

“I believe so,” Nadine said in a low voice. “It’s at one of the universities, a series of buildings, actually. I can guide us there, but you would be responsible for bringing the buildings to the ground.”

“Of course I would. And that is definitely within my wheelhouse,” Roman said, recalling times he had done similar things. Maybe not a full-scale building, but it only took a disruption in the foundation, which he was confident in doing.

Yet again, it dawned on him at that moment why his own government was so apprehensive about Roman using his powers freely.

With the ability to modify almost anything, someone with his power could do incredible damage before they were brought to justice. He had witnessed this in his fight against Margo, and looking back, the destruction they had wrought seemed small compared to what someone could do if they really wanted to bring a place down.

“Okay, so we would do that tomorrow, right?” Roman asked. “Or the day after?”

“Tomorrow. We can do it in the morning, then return here and lie low for a while. I have something I need to do tomorrow afternoon. They won’t suspect it’s me. Why would it be?” she asked, removing the tiara.

“We have to make it look casual,” Roman said.

“Believe me, I’ll be able to handle that part. Eastern University is always filled with students, especially near the Quad. The production buildings are sort of hidden in plain sight. From the Quad, you wouldn’t expect the government to be doing something in such close proximity to the public.”

“Will people be in there?” Celia asked Nadine, concern in her eyes.

“Tomorrow is the university president’s birthday. Classes have been canceled, and support staff has been told to come in four hours later than normal.”

“Really?” Roman asked, looking at her with a raised eyebrow “Because if that’s the case, how convenient is that?”

“It’s really convenient,” Nadine told him with a shrug. “We got lucky. Like you, I’m not interested in killing innocent people, and to think that a day meant to glorify the president of the university would prevent us from doing so is just one of the ironies of life.”

“It really is,” Roman said as he moved back to his bed. He yawned and sat down. “Speaking of days, it’s been a long one.”

“Yes, it has,” Nadine told him as she locked up the tiara.

While she went to the restroom to get ready for bed, Roman relaxed some, his hands now crossed over his chest as he tried to get comfortable on the stiff mattress.

They’ve made a tiara that can replicate my powers, he thought to Miranda.

A tiara? the telepath thought back to him. Like a princess?

Yes, I just saw the prototype. It works. The East is already in the process of mass-producing them. It seems a little impulsive, to be honest, considering they haven’t been thoroughly tested. But even if these tiaras can do a quarter of what I’m capable of, we have a real problem on our hands.

Can you think of what it looks like? I should be able to intercept the image and relay it to Command.

Roman remembered the tiara and the gemstones on it, how the one Nadine had pressed to activate had flashed blue.

Got it, Miranda thought back to him.

All trains have been delayed because of the attack earlier today. I don’t know if you knew that.

Miranda’s voice played out in his head just a few moments later. Really? I was hoping not to have to stay in this shithole country any longer than necessary.

Nadine has scheduled us to return two days from now. You should do the same. This information has yet to be released to the public, and when it is, there may be some ticket scalping, or other issues. I don’t know how that works here.

I’ll be in touch with our contacts at the embassy.

Roman considered for a moment if he should tell her what they planned to do tomorrow. The old Roman would have just kept the information to himself and gone with it, but he was trying here—or at least he was hoping to make it look like he was trying.

Nadine has suggested that we, meaning I, use my powers to destroy two of the buildings where the production and testing are taking place. I would do this by bringing down their support structures. The buildings are at Eastern University, but tomorrow is the university president’s birthday, and all classes have been canceled. Further, support staff won’t be in until four hours later than they normally come.

Minimal casualties.

Yes, Roman thought back to her. Hopefully none.

I will relay this and get you the approval you need.

I definitely need this approval. I don’t know how I would walk back from this now.

Understood. It is to our country’s benefit to delay the replication of these devices. It would be even better if we could get a copy of one. Do you think that’s something you could take from her? Then there is the second part of your mission, Miranda thought to him, referring to how Roman was supposed to eventually “remove” Nadine.

I think she’s still too valuable to us as an asset to remove her here. It would be best to do so back in Centralia.

That makes sense. We don’t have the same extradition agreements with the East as we do the West. I’ll get you your approval.

Thanks. One more thing: Nadine is planning to do something tomorrow afternoon. Maybe we’ll be able to get together.

I would like that. I don’t know how we’ll get some time alone, but…

If it happens, it happens. There’s always time in Centralia. Good night, Miranda.

Nighty-night, Roman.

“You look tired,” Nadine said, startling Roman. He blinked his eyes to see her standing over him in a pair of silk pajamas.

“Sorry,” he told her. “Almost dozed off there.”

“At least change your clothes before you go to bed,” she said.

“Yeah,” Roman told her as he sat up, his eyes darting over to Celia, who now sat in the chair near the window. She smiled at him and he took her life away, the doll’s head falling forward, her shoulder slouching.

Roman took off his shirt and pants, then lay back down.

“You don’t mind if Coma stands guard, do you?” he asked Nadine, who had already settled onto the other bed.

“Not at all.”

“Good.” Roman flicked off the lights using his power, his eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room. “See you in your dreams.”

Roman awoke at the crack of dawn, actively forgetting everything that’d been discussed with Nadine in the dream he’d just had.

It made it easier that it had happened in a dream, and it wasn’t like he had to worry about Miranda poking around very much anyway.

Still, leading the telepath on was a precaution he knew he needed to take.

A message came in almost immediately from Miranda, letting Roman know he had been approved to bring the buildings down, and to keep in contact with her.

“Good to know,” he said under his breath as he sat up and looked over to Nadine. She was still sleeping, her back facing away from him. He motioned Coma over, his combat doll coming to him and taking a seat on his lap.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Like some tea and breakfast would do me just right. Other than that, I’m fine.”

“That’s good,” she said, the corners of her mask lifting as she smiled at him.

“Hopefully, this will all be over soon.”

“Hopefully.”

He placed his hand under her skirt and ran it along her leg, feeling her smooth skin. Coma shifted over to the left a little, so her rear was directly on top of Roman’s lap. The doll adjusted her hips, looking over her shoulder at him.

“Not now,” he said.

She stood without protest, her heels clacking on the wooden floor until they reached the carpet, waking Nadine.

“We need to go,” the Eastern spy said instead of good morning.

“I was waiting for you to take the lead,” Roman told her.

“Right.”

Nadine moved toward the restroom, bringing her overnight pack with her. As she did this, Roman returned life to Celia and got dressed. Once everything was on aside from his boots, he turned in Casper’s direction, the tiny doll suddenly alive.

“What did I miss?” Casper asked.

“Not a lot. But we do have some things we need to do today. Actually…” Roman considered this for a moment.

It would be best for him to not have his dolls draining his power, aside from Coma, and he could always have her rest on a bench or sit on the ground while he did what he needed to do.

“Sorry, Casper,” Roman said, and before she could protest, the life twisted out of her, the tiny doll falling face first on the bed.

“She’s not going to like that,” Celia said.

“No need to make anything,” Nadine called from the bathroom. “They have a buffet downstairs.”

“Are you sure?” Celia asked.

“All the hotels here do, at least in the capital.”

“I suppose I’ll be staying here then,” Celia said, still with a smile on her face.

“Yes, I’m sorry I can’t bring you,” Roman told her. “This might take more power than I’m used to using.”

“It’s fine,” Celia said as she took a seat again at the table. “It makes sense.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Roman told Celia as he met Nadine at the door.

Coma waited for both of them to pass before stepping out herself, the three of them quickly making their way down to the lobby, where Roman smelled a hint of spice with an undertone of boiling tea leaves.

There was food spread out on a table in a room behind the reception area, pastries as well as potatoes and carrots, and two fresh pots of tea on a table pressed against the wall.

They ate quickly, Coma taking her place near the door as always.

Once they were finished, Nadine and Roman moved to the hotel’s public teleportation zone, a pyramid of light beginning to form just as they stepped up to it.

The pyramid of light oscillated a few times before inverting on itself and taking the form of a woman in high-waisted pants and a flowing top, a sparkle to her eyes.

“Shall we?” she asked graciously.

Roman and Nadine were suddenly standing in yet another approved teleportation zone set before a rather expansive university quad. It was a bit chilly outside, absolutely no wind, the grounds clean and well maintained.

The Quad must have run three kilometers north to south. From students working out to people enjoying cups of hot cocoa while sitting together on picnic blankets, it was a pretty active place.

“This really isn’t bad,” Roman started to say, but Nadine was already moving away from him. He caught up to her, Coma heading up the rear.

“Do you see those buildings over there?” she asked under her breath, gesturing toward an open area surrounding a pair of magnificent fountains.

He looked up a set of marble steps to the buildings in question, which were several stories tall. They practically loomed over the campus, one taller than its counterpart, which was much wider and had a glass terrace at its top.

“And you’re sure no one’s in there?” he asked Nadine.

“I’m not sure; but there shouldn’t be many if there are some.”

“Yeah,” Roman said as they moved closer to the fountain.

He was already feeling apprehensive about this, but something about Nadine’s assured demeanor calmed him, reminding Roman that however risky this was, it was the right thing to do, especially if they were able to replicate his powers.

Nadine wasn’t stupid. She hadn’t left the prototype back in the hotel room with Roman’s lifeless dolls; no, it was with her now, the Eastern spy carrying it as if it were a handbag.

After shaking his hands out, Roman turned in the direction of the two buildings. “Coma, please take a seat.”

His combat doll walked over to a bench beside a stone parapet and sat, her arms at her sides. Her head dropped as Roman took her power away.

He then focused on the marble steps and sent forward a ripple that smashed into the first building.

He took control of his ripple as it moved through the building, grabbing whatever he could from the foundation and yanking it toward the epicenter.

People started to turn, Roman immediately covered by Nadine, who grabbed him and pretended like she was hugging him as he continued to destroy the first building, which naturally affected the foundation of the second.

The two buildings fell, screams ringing out across the Quad as people ran in opposite directions.

Roman quickly gave Coma her life back, his head pounding as he did so, Nadine leading him away.

They joined the crowd, panic swelling through the Quad as teleporters appeared and a cloud of dust and debris began to rain down.

The three came to a teleporter who was already waiting for them, Nadine, Roman, and Coma gone in a flash.

Chapter Thirteen: Trespassers

There was a fence around the warehouse, concertina wire running along its top. It was dark outside, clouds covering the moon, breezy as usual. The streets before the warehouse were dimly lit, not a soul in sight, yet another indicator that Margo and Paris were about to be ambushed.

“It sure seems quiet around here,” Paris said, squeezing Margo’s hand.

“It does, my love. It’s almost as if someone wanted to make sure there were no civilians around.”

“That doesn’t seem like a very smart idea.”

Margo smiled. “No, it really doesn’t.”

As she approached the fence surrounding the warehouse, Margo noticed that the gate was open. The wind caused it to swing slightly on its hinge, creating a squeak that cut through the silence of the night.

Margo was the first to step in, a rat scurrying by. It didn’t make it very far; within moments the rat was lying on its back, its legs curled and its tail twitching.

“No, we don’t need a pet,” Margo told Paris.

Her doll laughed quietly. “That’s funny. If we’re going to have a pet, I want something a little bit bigger than that. I want a horse.”

“A horse? What about the baby?”

“That too.”

“A horse and a baby, huh?” Margo asked as she looked into the entrance of the boarded-up warehouse, signs plastered across it reminding the general public that this was government property and trespassers would be prosecuted.

Margo suddenly felt a telepath in the vicinity, that familiar creep moving up the back of her skull. She was still using Catherine the wind user’s body, meaning it wasn’t her brain per se that the telepath was trying to affect, which would work against the telepath’s power as the hallucination started to take shape.

It was suddenly snowy, an environment entirely unfamiliar to Margo.

There was a snow-covered house before her, lights flickering, something eerie about the setting. Margo’s first instinct was to go toward the home, but she quickly snapped out of it, focusing instead on the ground beneath her.

Even though it looked like it was covered in snow, it only took her a moment to sense the concrete, to feel vibrations in it, to know there were others in the warehouse.

“I see one,” Paris said, her voice barely breaking through Margo’s hallucination.

And perhaps if it had been her own brain, her own memories, the hallucination would have thrown her off guard.

Maybe the telepath would have shown her what had really happened between Margo and her father Malus, or made her relive killing her adopted parents, or some of the horrors she had witnessed during the Western Plague.

Maybe.

Margo had to slightly shift her consciousness into the concrete below to disrupt the telepath. She then lifted her hands and wrapped concrete around the person’s legs, immediately breaking them off at the knee.

“Saint!” a female cried, the inside of the darkened warehouse returning to Margo’s sight as a woman made of stone bolted toward her.

Such amateurs.

Margo lifted two slabs from the flooring and smashed the woman between them. The slabs pulled away and clapped together again, the echo ricocheting to the far corners of the warehouse, making the structure quake.

She then cast her hand in the direction of what was left of her opponent, the woman’s stone head separating and falling onto the ground with a loud thump.

Paris picked up the severed head.

“Looks like the head of a statue,” she said as the solid rock face let out a final gasp.

A teleporter appeared behind Margo, a dark-skinned woman with short white hair and a white mask. She was just about to latch on to her when Margo simply exploded the woman’s heart in her body.

The woman fell forward, dead to the world.

“Did someone say Saint?” Margo asked as she moved further into the warehouse. “As in Team Saint?”

“Who’s that?” Paris asked as they both heard someone charging in their direction, the footsteps coming from above.

A snarling blue wolfman leaped down from the rafters; Margo sent a spike straight through his body. The smell of blood and intestines filled the air as he slid down, the tip of the spike bending over and pushing him down further until it tore out of his body.

“Team Saint was a famous group of Centralian exemplars; but now it looks like all but one of them is dead…” Margo said as she made her way to the telepath, who was lying on the ground, concrete snakes having snapped his legs and wrapped up into his torso. “Hello, Saint.”

“Fuck,” he said, another hallucination flashing across Margo’s borrowed mind’s eye.

She kicked him in the nose, the hallucination disappearing almost instantly. “I’ve killed everyone on your team except you.”

“Fuck…” he whispered, his mask with the jewel on it now barely hanging on by a thread, his nose a bloody mess.

“Where is Roman Martin? You’ve set this trap up for me, or someone did. Who agreed to this anyway?” she asked, crouching before him. “Who would be stupid enough to send people with your powers against me?”

Paris walked up and placed her hand on Margo’s shoulder. The doll brought her foot back and kicked the man in the face as well.

“Not too hard, dear,” Margo told her.

“Sorry, it just looked like fun.”

“I have to admit, Saint—and this is very rare for me—tonight I have felt pity not once, but twice. First for the invisible exemplar you sent to tail me. And now for your team. Such a famous team brought down in such a savage, unnecessary way in…” Margo pretended to check a watch on her wrist.

“It was quick,” Paris said.

“Five minutes? It may have been less than that. The point is, and maybe you can relay this to the people that eventually find you: I’ll die when I want to die,” Margo said, enunciating each word. “There’s nothing your government or mine will be able to do to stop me, which, as I’m guessing you’ve realized by now, is why they only sent four people. Better to kill off disposable exemplars than have the humiliation of losing an elite team, which clearly you aren’t.”

“Ugh…”

“There, there, Saint, it’s not time to pass out from the pain just yet. I need to know where Roman Martin is. Tell me that and…” she cooed. “There’s not a lot I’m going to be able to offer or promise you, and I certainly can’t repair your legs. Maybe a healer would be able to do that, but we both know how rare they are. I suppose one thing I could do would be to end your suffering relatively quickly, rather than letting it draw out. I’m sure by now you’ve sent a mental message and others are on the way. If they find you like this, they may be able to give you some medicine, but the pain you will experience in that time will be excruciating, both before the medicine kicks in and after you’ve sort of recovered. You will be crippled for life, I’m afraid.”

“No,” he said, choking back a sob with a grunt. “Can heal.”

“Then I’ll make sure you can’t heal. Now, Roman Martin. And I end this now. Paris?”

“Yes?”

“Be a doll and use some of the beastman’s blood to write this message on the wall, and do it quickly. Please write: ‘I’ll die when I want to die.’ but make it fast. I’m surprised no one has arrived already.”

“I get to do some painting?”

“That’s right, love. Hurry.” Margo returned her attention to Saint. “So where is he?”

Saint shook his head.

Margo responded by trailing the concrete up his body even further, digging it into his ribcage.

“The Eastern…” he barked. “The Eastern Province.”

“Why would they send him there?”

“I… I don’t know…”

Margo shrugged. “That’s way too far for me to travel. Do you know when he will return?”

“Tomorrow or the day after… soon.”

“Thank you,” Margo said as she placed her hand on Saint’s cheek. “It’s sad to see a famous exemplar go.”

Blood started to trickle out of his eye sockets, the man letting out one final gasp before his brain ruptured.

Chapter Fourteen: One Last Visit

Nadine couldn’t quite relate to how Roman felt, but she understood why he looked so vexed when they arrived back in the hotel room.

The white-haired man paced back and forth in front of her, ready for anything, worried that innocent lives had been taken. He calmed himself down with a few breaths, then smoothed his hands over his black jacket and finally took a seat next to lifeless Celia, animating her.

“Did you do it?” the doll asked with immediate concern.

“I did. I just don’t know…”

“It’s fine,” Nadine told him.

Even though Roman was well aware of some of the things going on behind the scenes, there were a few details Nadine had kept to herself, knowing they would make his story more convincing.

“You don’t think anyone saw this, do you?”

“Again, relax, we’re fine. We’re safe here. Just take a moment to breathe, Roman.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” the orange-eyed man said, steeling himself.

A thin smile took shape on Nadine’s face. She knew neither of the buildings they had destroyed were the same building where the devices were being manufactured.

This was by design.

What happened next and the distraction that followed would be their ticket out.

Roman was subconsciously aware of this, but he had done a very good job of keeping the overall strategy to their dream conversations with Abby, and he seemed entirely convinced by what they’d just done, which was exactly where he needed to be once he met with the Centralian telepath again.

“It’s going to work out,” Nadine said after the two were silent for a moment.

She still had the case with the fake device in it and planned to leave it behind, knowing full well that Roman would get it to the right people.

“And you can destroy this while I’m gone, right?” she asked, nodding to the case, which sat on the end of her bed. “I have to leave in a few minutes.”

“Yeah, no problem. I might want to play around with it too.”

“There’s no need for that,” Nadine told him firmly. “This may be one of the last known prototypes. From what I was told yesterday, everything was kept in those two buildings. That doesn’t mean they won’t be able to replicate them, as the schematics will be somewhere else. But we destroyed a lot of the jewels they used to power these things. It’s…” She swallowed. “It’s definitely a setback for my country.”

“But a necessary one,” Roman reminded her.

“Yes. At least according to us.”

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“We have to, Roman.”

The two of them winced as an ear-piercing sound met their ears, and Coma’s right arm morphed into a blade. Roman’s combat doll loosened up once a teleporter appeared, this one a man with spiky hair and a big grin on his face.

Nadine joined him, Roman putting his fingers in his ears as the two vanished.

“See you soon, Roman.”

“Bye.”

Nadine and the telepath reappeared in an authorized teleportation zone near a village known as Rutland.

It was a quaint place, the homes set along narrow lanes with plenty of foliage—so much, in fact, that in the summer it seemed like many of the houses were built into the trees. This wasn’t quite the case, but there were some trees that had grown into the houses over the years, the families accepting them, always respecting the forest no matter how intrusive it became.

Nadine cringed as the teleporter started to disappear, the same screeching howl leaving with him.

She took a deep breath then, trying to remember the last time she had come to Rutland.

Technically, Nadine wasn’t supposed to come here, but that had never stopped her from visiting in the past.

While she generally liked to follow the rules, she was also well aware that many rules were made to be bent, as long as one was careful.

Nadine passed a bakery as she walked toward the town center, the smell of baked bread reaching her nostrils.

She stepped in, remembering what the place had looked like so many years ago and seeing that it hadn’t changed a bit.

There were still chairs with red seat covers, the white drapes covering the windows yellowed by the sun. The owner of the bakery, now considerably older than the last time Nadine had seen her, still had the same friendly demeanor and a wise look on her face, as if she’d had plenty of time to think while watching dough rise.

“One of the apple pastries,” Nadine said instead of hello.

“Just one, dear?”

“You know what? Make it three.”

The woman retrieved three of the pastries and handed the bag to Nadine. After paying, Nadine thanked the woman before stepping back out to the cobblestone streets of Rutland.

She ate one of the pastries as she walked, the sweet taste of the apple bringing back a whole slew of memories.

She remembered running along this lane as a child, climbing the trees, the falls and scrapes, how the village beamed with pride when the soldiers would pass through. The surrounding trees had enough foliage to protect them from the rain, children still able to play outside even if it was storming.

Then there were the winters, which could be bitterly cold but were often rather dry, with just a couple days with snow.

At about the point she had finished her apple pastry, Nadine saw the home at the end of the lane, manicured bushes before it, a picket fence surrounding the property.

The roof had recently been reshingled, but other than that the place was almost identical to the way it had looked the last time Nadine had visited.

She paused at the freshly painted gate, steadying herself as she remembered she couldn’t give too much away.

It was important that she merely be thought of as a kind stranger, that nothing happened to the two people she was about to visit.

When she was ready, Nadine took the steps to the front door, knocking softly.

A man eventually came to the door, opened it, and immediately looked from Nadine’s face to the bag of pastries in her hand.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m new in town, and I just thought I would stop by with some pastries.”

“New in town? Where are you living?” the elderly man asked, wrinkles appearing on his forehead as he took her in. He wore overalls and his hair was a bit of a mess, whiskers hanging from the bottom of his chin.

“Just around the way.” Nadine motioned in a direction that he wouldn’t be able to follow with his gaze.

“And you brought these for me?” the older man asked, surprise filling his eyes.

“And your wife.”

“Oh…” He cleared his throat. “She died a few weeks back. I’m sorry to…”

“Mom’s dead?” Nadine asked, all her nerves tensing at once.

The man paused, one of his bushy eyebrows rising. “Excuse me?”

“What I meant was, um, your wife, she’s dead?”

“Maurine came down with something,” the man acknowledged with a grimace. “You know, back in my day, we would have had a healer that could cure whatever illness she had. But none of those exist anymore.”

Nadine recalled that she had been in the country with Eli over a month ago.

Had she known…

She shook her head. There was no way she could have slipped away with the healer boy, especially at that time.

A sense of quiet dread spread between them.

The man sniffed, excused himself and turned away from Nadine as he went for a handkerchief in his back pocket. He pretended to blow his nose, but she knew he was wiping tears away.

She’d seen him do this before.

“Do you mind if I come in?” Nadine asked softly. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

“How many pastries do you have in there?”

She smiled, trying to hold back tears herself. “Two.”

“Sure, why not? What harm can it do? No one wants to eat pastries alone,” he said, trying to smile.

A flood of emotion came to Nadine as she took a step into her childhood home, especially once she saw that anything tying her to her mother and father had been completely erased. Even in the quick tour he gave her, Nadine saw that her old room was now a workshop, the animal drawings she’d left on the wall as a child painted over.

Nadine hadn’t been in the house since she’d joined the agency.

She had visited her parents a couple of times, just to drop off pastries, always playing the role of a mysterious new neighbor.

But she’d never been inside.

And Nadine realized as she ended up in the kitchen, sitting at the same table she used to sit at as a child, that this was as closest to a dream in real life as she’d ever come before.

She knew this was actually happening; she knew she had just been at the hotel with Roman, and she was well aware of what they had done at Eastern University earlier and what it would spark.

But to be here, to be here now, her father sitting across from her and eating a pastry with a knife and a fork, a gentleman as always. And to think that her mother was dead, that her own country hadn’t even told her that her mother had passed…

Nadine’s melancholy turned to a sudden flash of anger, the woman barely able to say anything as her father spoke, telling her things she already knew about her mother, how kind she was, how she had changed their wild backyard into a garden that had sustained them through some of the thinner times.

And she wanted to tell him at that moment that she was his daughter, that she knew all these things.

But she couldn’t.

Nadine knew better.

Regardless of what happened to her, and something was definitely going to happen to her, Nadine didn’t want her father getting involved in any way, and she most certainly didn’t want anyone showing up at the doorstep, ready to have a conversation that would end poorly on his part.

So she kept up the act and held back the tears.

As much as it pained her to do so, Nadine just let him speak, never revealing to him the truth, that his mind had been wiped, that he wasn’t alone in this cruel and often unnecessary world.

Sitting before him was his only daughter. The man truly had somebody, his own flesh and blood, even.

“Are you going to eat that?” the man asked at some point, casually pointing his knife at her pastry.

“No,” Nadine said on the verge of tears again, “it’s for you.”

Chapter Fifteen: A Leaf in the Wind

Roman waited at the same roadside food stand he had been to the previous day. The food was a bit different now, but it was still based on the same theme of potatoes and other root vegetables coupled with a sliver of meat.

There were quail eggs cracked over it this time, however, a brunch of sorts.

Celia and Coma were with him, Casper deactivated and in his pocket. Celia sat across from Roman with the metal case in her lap, the doll holding it as if it were a handbag.

“I heard about the attack,” a man said as he walked by, his friend to the right of him.

“I figured you had. You’re always following the news.”

“They’re saying it was Centralia.”

“Shit…” the second man muttered. “I didn’t hear that part. Only that there was an attack.”

“I really hope it wasn’t him. If it was…”

“Yeah, if it was…”

The two men passed, Roman’s only response being to bite his lip and lower his head.

“I don’t understand,” Celia said.

“It will all make sense in the end.” Roman had barely eaten any of the food in front of him, and rather than try to explain to her how the earlier attack would be interpreted, he focused on his plate.

As he was cutting into his potatoes, the message came in from Miranda. Roman dropped his fork onto his plate.

“What is it?” Celia asked.

Roman’s combat doll stepped in front of the table, ready for anything.

The message played out again in Roman’s head: The Eastern Province government has discovered us. We are being taken into custody now. Naomi and me. The embassy has been alerted. Jess is in our hotel room. Roman, do not panic; I’ll send your location to her, and once she’s clear she’ll come to you. Where are you? Hurry. They’ll prevent telepathy soon.

Roman finally swallowed what he was eating and sent a message back to the telepath. I’m at the same food stand we met at yesterday. Are you okay?

Don’t worry about me. They can’t do anything to me. War would break out…

War may have already broken out. They’re framing the attack at the university as an attack by Centralia. I don’t even know how they’re getting this information. Well, I do know one way, but that wasn’t part of the plan. Or was it?

Roman shook his head. He damn well knew what the plan was, but he had to play along.

I’m okay. I’m not worried. What’s most important now is that you meet with Jess and deliver the prototype.

What about you? Roman thought to her.

Let our government handle it.

Absolutely not, Roman said, an idea coming to him. If a war was necessary—and he knew it wasn’t, but he also knew it was inevitable at this point—how bad would it be for him to yet again rescue someone from Eastern military custody?

Roman…

Tell Jess where I am. I’ll wait for her to come here and we’ll go from there. In the meantime, stay strong.

Miranda didn’t reply.

And even though he was no longer hungry, Roman returned to his food, hoping to blend in as much as possible.

The streets before the food stand were still quiet, the occasional person passing by or police exemplar flying overhead. There sure were a lot of flying police here, and Roman soon realized in watching one that they weren’t exemplars; several had some sort of hand or boot device that allowed them to fly.

His thoughts returned to Miranda.

While he didn’t much like her, he did appreciate her demeanor in the wake of such a calamity. And even though Roman was far from a patriot, he had to appreciate how calm she had been, how even in such a terrible situation her thoughts didn’t seem very panicky.

Yet again, the advantage of having actual training, unlike Roman, who’d had some training and then been forced to rely on his past skills and cloudy intuition to steer his course of action.

“You never said what was happening,” said Celia.

“Miranda and Naomi have been taken,” he said under his breath.

She gasped. “That’s terrible news. What are we supposed to do now? Are they safe?”

“Jess can morph into any inanimate object; I’m guessing she’s still in the room, maybe a lamp or something, and waiting for a good time to slip out. She’s probably not a lamp,” Roman said, shaking his head. “Because someone might wonder why there are suddenly two lamps. But she’s there, and since she can turn into anything, I don’t think it will be very hard for her to hide even if they do sweep the room.”

“So we wait?” Coma asked, his combat doll still standing guard.

“We wait.”

“And are we planning to go after Miranda and Naomi?”

“You know me so well,” Roman told his combat doll. “Let’s get more details first.”

“This is going to be dangerous, isn’t it?” Celia asked.

“I think you already know the answer to that question,” Coma answered for Roman.

Roman stayed put for well over an hour.

He didn’t know when Nadine would return to their hotel room, but this little detail no longer mattered to him. What mattered to him now was meeting with Jess, turning the device over, and finalizing his desire to go after his peers.

Even with what Roman was planning to do, a part of him—and perhaps a stupid part of him—couldn’t let Miranda and Naomi be captured.

And with the news now that the Easterners were considering this an act of war, it only made sense for Roman to dig the knife in just a little deeper.

At least in his head it did.

Roman couldn’t help but have doubts about what they were planning, even though some of the details were foggy.

“If you keep looking worried like that, the wrinkles will permanently stay on your forehead,” Celia told him.

“Where did you hear that?”

The beautiful redheaded doll shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

A woman walked by in a felt trench coat, a leaf attached to the back of it. The leaf pressed off the woman as she passed, landing on Roman’s table.

“Jess?”

The leaf made a motion that looked like it was nodding.

“Let me make sure you’re clear.”

Roman placed his hand on Coma’s waist, moving her back until her tight rear was pressed against the table.

He then set the leaf on the ground on the other side of the table. Looking around once more, he noticed that the owner of the food stand could potentially see him through a window on the side of his shack.

With this in mind, Roman cautiously lowered the blinds on the other side of the window, the man oblivious to what was happening as he fried up more potatoes.

“You’re clear.”

Jess’s form took shape, an absolutely exasperated look on her face. “Roman…”

“It’s fine,” he told her quickly. “Tell me what happened. Everything.”

“We were just getting up when they came—well, I was at least. There were several of them, and they had rings that nullified powers.”

“How did Miranda send messages to me then?” he asked her.

“Miranda was down in the breakfast area. I had just finished taking a shower, so I took the form of a towel. Naomi relayed the message to Miranda, I’m guessing. That’s the only way it would make sense. Miranda was also apprehended in the hallway, likely right around the time she was messaging you. It felt like they’d been watching this entire time. Or at least, Naomi and Miranda.”

“You just stayed a towel on the floor?”

She nodded. “They searched the room, but the soldiers with the power elimination rings never made it into the restroom. If they had, they likely would have found me.”

“Okay, do you have any idea where they were taken?”

“The military and police are very interchangeable in this country,” Jess said quickly, running her hand through her blond hair to push some of the strands out of her face. “Then again, they could have teleported them anywhere by now.”

“Shit,” Roman said under his breath. “And the longer we wait, the harder it will be to go after them.”

“Go after them?” Jess looked at Roman as if he were crazy.

“That’s right,” he said with certainty. “There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to let them face whatever will happen to them in Eastern custody. Not if I can help it.”

“That’s very brave of you,” Jess said in a low voice, “but it isn’t our role here. Where’s the device?”

Roman looked at Celia and the metal case in her lap.

“That’s it?”

“It is. But I’m serious, I want to do something about Miranda and Naomi now.”

“They’ve trained for this,” Jess said, a calmness coming over her tone.

“I don’t think you remember what happened to you back in the West,” Roman told her. “For some strange reason, our operatives are trained in an almost every-man-for-himself sort of mindset. It really pissed me off then, and it’s pissing me off now. Ava showed little to no concern about what happened to you in Kevin’s pleasure house, if you recall. We can’t do the same to Miranda and Naomi.”

“I think you’re confusing concern with faith and dedication toward the overall mission,” she told him sharply. “I’m sure Ava was concerned, but she had a different mission, or I should say we had a mission.”

“To capture the serums, which none of us seem to possess now. You’d think if they were sending us to a foreign country, they would at least give us something that would heal one of us if we were injured in some way.”

“And let the serums fall into the hands of the Eastern Province? That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“Some risks are worth taking.”

“Whatever. Do you know when your target will be back?”

“I don’t know when Nadine will be back.”

“Do you even know where she went?”

Roman shrugged, unable to hide the agitation in his voice. “She said she had something to handle.”

Jess glanced at Coma, who still stood before the table, stoic as ever. “Do you feel safe here?”

“Sometimes I don’t have faith in my own power,” Roman admitted, “but yes, I feel safe enough. I realize now that there aren’t many other exemplars who could bring me down. I could go toe-to-toe with most Type IIs, obviously depending on their actual power. Someone with enhanced speed would be able to take me down, and like anyone, I’m susceptible to a strong telepath and certain elemental forces, most notably wind. But no, I’m not afraid. I know we share a similar power, but yours has limitations.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Jess said bitterly.

“Mine doesn’t, or at least it mostly doesn’t.” Roman grimaced. “I was able to bring down two buildings today with just a flick of the wrist.”

“You didn’t experience any strain?”

“There was some, maybe more than I would like to admit, but my point is I’m able to do something like that—and if I can do that, I can do this.”

“You really are going to go after them, aren’t you?”

“Think about it,” Roman said, his eyes darting from left to right. “The attack today is going to be considered an act of war. The East will respond if we do this now, or if I do this now, and it can be grouped under this initial attack. Sure, they’ll be two separate incidents, but they’ll likely be coupled together, and after a few days pass, the main focus will be on the university buildings. If we wait and try it later, it could be considered a new and separate attack. Another scenario is that the Eastern Province kills them, which most certainly would call for retaliation. Do you see what I’m saying here?”

“I…” Jess sighed. “It makes sense,” she finally admitted. “But they aren’t going to approve this.”

“Most of the things I do aren’t approved,” Roman told her.

“And that’s how you ended up in this situation.”

Roman smirked. “You’re mostly right, but I’ve been thinking a little more about how I’ve ended up in this situation. I think a lot of it stems from what a person with my ability is able to do. I’m sure if I were…” He swallowed hard. Roman hated to say the next sentence, but it was true, and he was trying to be more honest. “I’m sure if I had been given a different power, no one would give two shits about me. But it’s because of this power I’ve been given—the ability to collapse a building relatively quickly, among other things, from animating the dead to controlling most elements—that our government has been paying such close attention to me. Exploiting me.”

“Now you’re the exploited one?”

“In a way, yes, but that’s not what this is about. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that part of our mission here, especially after our own government approved me bringing down the university buildings, was to spark somewhat of an altercation. Do you deny this?”

“I haven’t been briefed on anything that resembles what you’re saying.”

“Are you at a level of clearance that you would be briefed on something like this?”

Jess reluctantly shook her head.

“Neither am I.”

“Obviously.”

“But if it’s a war they want, it’s a war they’ll get, and as I said, coupling this rescue mission with bringing down the buildings might make things easier in the end.”

“I have to get the device to the embassy,” Jess said with a note of hesitation.

“So you’re going with me?”

“I…”

“You can communicate with the embassy, right?” Celia asked, interrupting their little moment.

Jess nodded.

“Have them come here, and I’ll take the device. You and Roman can go after the other two, Coma as well.”

Jess was silent for a moment.

“Well?” Roman asked.

“I’m not so keen on taking orders from an animated sex doll…”

“It’s a good plan,” Roman said, Celia not reacting at all to Jess’s biting statement.

“I’ll have to frame it in a different way.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll have to say you presented me with no other option but to tag along with you, and that I did so to monitor you as we have been tasked to do all along.”

“Frame it however you’d like,” Roman told her. “I’m sure your powers will be helpful in some way.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said as she offered Roman a cheeky smile. “And I do know where they were going, by the way. I heard one of the soldiers mention it, a place called Central Holding. I’m assuming that’s a localized prison before their transfer to a black site or something of the sort.”

“It’s a start,” Roman said. “Alert the embassy so Celia can deliver the tiara. We’ll rescue Miranda and Naomi, and then we’ll have the embassy pick us up where I can retrieve Celia and get back to Nadine.”

“That easy, huh?”

“Yeah, that easy.”

Chapter Sixteen: Smock Masks

Celia left with a teleporter who had taken shape in slivers, each slice of her body pressing together until she was fully formed.

Once the two were gone, Jess followed Roman and Coma back to their hotel, where Roman casually asked the clerk where Central Holding was located.

“Why would anyone want to go there?” the hotel clerk asked before correcting her tone. “I mean, that’s not a common tourist destination.”

“No reason,” Roman said, clearing his throat. Jess elbowed him and he continued, “We were told there was a great, um, restaurant around there.”

“In the Ninth Quarter? Are you sure you aren’t mistaken?”

“Remember the woman I was with when I checked in?” Roman asked, trying to be patient with the clerk.

“Yes.”

“That’s where she’s telling us to meet her, at some restaurant there. How do we get there?”

“You would likely want to order a teleporter…”

“No, not a teleporter, something else. We want to…” Roman glanced at Coma and Jess, Jess giving him a ‘wrap it up’ glare. “Enjoy the view of the city. Verne is a sight to behold!”

Jess snickered; Roman winced.

“Then you would take the trolley,” the hotel clerk said, unable to hide her skepticism. “There should be one in the next ten minutes or so. They run every fifteen minutes; I just heard one pass.”

“Wonderful,” Roman said as he turned to the exit.

He stopped, Jess almost running into him.

“It’s on the right,” the hotel clerk said without looking up from whatever she was reading.

Roman didn’t recall hearing a trolley going by from his room, but perhaps…

He looked up at the building, acknowledging that his room was on the other side of the complex completely, which was why he hadn’t heard the trolley.

And just as the hotel clerk had said, the trolley was there within the next ten minutes, Roman, Jess, and Coma filing in.

The trolley was busier than Roman expected it would be, some people murmuring about the attack while others stared absentmindedly out the windows, their reflections visible in the glass.

Roman found himself doing this as well, canceling out his troubled thoughts, the ones of self-doubt and the ones chastising him for yet again taking destiny into his own hands.

He had to focus, so naturally, his mind found something else to wonder about.

The trolleys here seemed faster than the ones in Centralia.

The city of Verne wasn’t quite a blur, but Roman did find it hard to focus on anything very long due to the speed. He was able to pick out a few details, like the numerous parks and how several of the stations looked rundown, and most notably the expressions on people’s faces.

No one on the trolley was smiling; no one seemed happy, yet it didn’t feel like they were somehow experiencing a negative existence. Odd as it was, everyone looked content—grumpy, but content.

The trolley came to a stop at the Ninth Quarter station, Jess luckily paying enough attention to remind Roman this was where they needed to get off.

It wasn’t a very big station, more of an outpost really. It was open-air, and the three didn’t have to pass through any buildings to reach the street outside.

The structure known as Central Holding loomed over the district, the prison surrounded by an enormous wall, easily the size of a three-story building. Guards moved along the wall walk, and there was an entrance that looked like it should have a moat in front of it with its giant wooden door and detailed brickwork that lightly spelled out “Central Holding.”

“There,” Jess said, nodding to a boarded-up shack across the street from the western side of the wall. At a glance, it appeared to be a portable convenience store, one that was either abandoned or closed for the time being.

As the three approached it casually, Roman quickly melted the lock away, allowing them to slip inside.

It definitely wasn’t abandoned, the interior chock-full of snacks and canned beverages. “So closed for the day,” Roman mumbled as he shut the door behind them.

“Even though I was the first one to come in here, I’m suddenly wondering why…” Jess started to say.

“To give us a moment to think. We’ve seen the prison now and it’s broad daylight; we can’t go sneaking around it. How are we going to do this?”

“Sorry, can’t help you there. This was your idea, Roman. In fact, now that I’ve seen what it looks like, I’m thinking more and more that our best option is to get out of here.”

Roman looked toward the counter to see that a drop-down screen was locked, the other side boarded so he couldn’t see out.

Rather than fidget with it, he simply opened a hole in the wall facing the structure, expanding it so both he and Jess could see out. It was small enough that it wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention, at least from a distance, yet still wide enough for him to actually get a good view of the prison.

“I can send Casper,” he said, taking his doll out of his pocket. He placed her near the locked register, where she instantly came to life.

Before she could speak, Roman caught her up on what they were doing, Casper not at all opposed to breaking into such a formidable structure.

“I was born to break into prisons!” she said, punching her fists together.

“You know…” Jess began to shrink, energy swirling around her as she turned into an identical copy of Casper.

“No… No, you didn’t,” Casper told Jess, now looking down at the other doll from the register. They were the exact same size, Jess a few pounds heavier.

As she had likely seen Casper do before, Jess jumped onto Roman’s leg, quickly scaling up it and making her way to the register as well.

“Yes, I did,” Jess in tiny doll form told Casper.

“We are so going to fight.” Casper’s arms began morphing into blades.

“Relax, I’ve got an idea.”

“This better be good,” Casper said. Jess nodded in agreement as she turned to Roman.

“Coma and I will do the heavy lifting, obviously. You two find where they’re being held and lead us to them. Now, we know they’re going to be equipped with rings in there that nullify powers. They probably will also have telepaths, elementalists, maybe non-exemplars with other tech. There’s really no telling.”

“And you’re just going to go in there like that?” Jess asked, her voice tinier than before.

She was right.

While Coma might have a mask on, Roman was pretty identifiable with his white hair and orange eyes.

He took a quick glance around the space and found a smock.

“This will have to do,” he said as he wrapped the smock around his face, modifying it with his powers so he didn’t have to tie it off. It covered everything now except for his eyes, and after a few more adjustments, Roman made sure there weren’t any strands of white hair sticking out.

“You should give Coma a better mask too, one that covers her hair more,” Casper said. “I mean, as it stands, she looks like a sex doll.”

“That’s what I am,” Coma said sharply.

“Sure, that’s what I am too, or that’s what I was supposed to be until Roman fucked up transferring me into my larger body. Jess is a sex doll too—a chubby one, but a tiny little fuck buddy nonetheless.”

“Fuck you…” Jess grumbled.

Casper shrugged. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Lil’ Jessie. Men and women use us and we don’t really have a say in the matter. Equally so for Coma and Celia, even if they are animated from time to time.”

“Enough, Casper.”

“Sorry, Daddy.”

Roman ignored the tiny doll as he searched for something to morph into a mask, eventually settling on another smock.

Coma removed the hair ties, her dark hair spilling down the back of her neck. She twisted it up into a bun as Roman handed her the smock. After wrapping it around her head, Roman smoothed out the contours and harsh lines to make it fit perfectly.

“You two look so ridiculous,” Casper said with a snicker. Jess joined her, so that there were now two tiny dolls laughing.

“Let’s just make this happen,” Roman told them, his voice slightly muffled by his mask. “We’ll cause a distraction while you two find Miranda and Naomi; don’t forget to alert us. We’ll get them, and I don’t know what kind of condition we’ll be in but that may require additional effort on our part,” Roman told Coma, who simply nodded. “And Jess, you’ll arrange for the teleporter to get us and take us back to the embassy.”

Roman shook his head. He tried not to think about how risky this was going to be, nor how big of a chance he was taking in attempting it.

Now wasn’t the time for second-guessing himself.

Now was the time for action.

Chapter Seventeen: Prison Yard Fight

Roman walked toward the wall of the prison, his fists wrapped in metal he had stripped off the inside of the roadside stand.

He walked casually, his focus solely on the wall, and as he neared it Roman threw his hands forward, a wave of force rippling out in front of him.

An enormous hole was instantly carved into the brick, Casper and Jess quickly running forward as Roman lifted pillars from the ground of the inner courtyard.

As though he were a conductor, Roman again swelled his hands forward, the symphony pausing before hitting again and again, the world a tympani and Roman the mallet.

To say that the guards at Central Holding were surprised by the sudden disturbance would be the understatement of the decade.

Roman managed to do considerable damage before men appeared on the wall walk with wrist guards aimed at him, others getting behind barriers in the courtyard, a few already buried in the rubble.

The wrist guards all broke at the same time, a vein bulging on the side of Roman’s head as he ran his hand through the air. A few of the braver guards, two of the four clearly strongmen, advanced on Roman, ready to engage.

Their knees all snapped at the same time, the men crying out as they hit the pavement.

Roman lifted a large swath of cement and rolled it on top of them, hardening the material immediately, allowing them to live but preventing them from doing anything with their hands, as if they weren’t already focused on the extreme pain in their legs.

A winged woman with sharp talons dropped out of the sky, landing behind Roman.

And perhaps she would have reached him too had it not been for Coma, who dove off the roof of the roadside stand, twisting in the air, her blades aimed at the woman’s back.

Coma drove her sword arms in, the woman letting out a gasp as she fell forward. Coma quickly removed her left blade and stabbed the woman in the back of the head.

Roman was just about to tell her to minimize casualties, but he knew that even if he tried, people were going to die today.

And perhaps Roman from six or seven weeks ago would have thought more in this moment about those people, about what their lives had been up to the point when a masked man with orange eyes had appeared outside the prison and taken their lives faster than they could react.

But no.

Roman’s sole focus was on providing a distraction, saving any spare thought he had for Jess and Casper, who were tasked with locating the two prisoners.

Rather than run through the hole in the wall, Coma lifted a set of stairs from the ground, and quickly flipped on the wall walk, where she met her first assailant.

While two other guards tried to escape, one came right at Coma, his form starting to grow as muscles rippled down his back.

He swung; Coma jumped back a step, landing and performing a one-handed cartwheel.

The man looked at his chest to see he now had a slash mark across it. Before he could register what had just happened, Coma brought her attack home, sending a blade up through his neck and out the back of his head.

At the ground level, Roman was now dealing with an elementalist, the woman conjuring enormous flames and firing them through the hole he’d made in the wall.

As he’d done with Ava, Roman began to take control of the fire, his hand slowly moving before him as the flames started to balloon around his body.

He sent it all out at once, fire touching everything around him and nearly reaching Coma at the top of the wall walk.

The fire user pressed her hands forward to conjure yet another enormous fireball, and as she did her fingers started to break backward, then her wrists, before the woman’s elbows snapped and her arms went limp.

She fell to a knee; Roman swept her aside using a wave of pavement that also took out another prison guard running in his direction.

Roman was entirely focused, his mind pulling from the days when he’d been a fighter, his opponent looming before him, the ever-present potential for a strike to come from anywhere. He had fought both exemplars and non-exemplars, and he had lost to both classes as well.

The key for Roman now, especially with the power he possessed, was to maintain a heightened sense of awareness.

This was how he was able to sense something coming from behind him and turn just in time to engage a teleporter. Roman blocked the man’s punch, his assailant’s next strike catching him in the chin.

He had a weak left hook, and while Roman could have easily taken control of his heart and killed the man, he appreciated that the guy was brave enough to actually throw a fist at him.

So Roman responded.

He brought his own fists up, melting the metal away for a moment and popping the man in the face, the guy managing to block his second strike.

The teleporter came forward once again, appearing in a flash behind Roman with the hopes of delivering a shot straight to his kidney.

But Roman had already anticipated this, and his elbow came around to connect with the side of the man’s face.

Roman got lucky.

A stray blast from a wrist guard cut through the man’s chest, the teleporter crying out as he fell to the ground.

“Focus,” Roman reminded himself.

He lifted himself into the air on a pillar made of gravel, able to spot the man with the long-range wrist guard.

The metal swelled over his hand again as he fired bits of it at a sniper, killing his opponent instantly with a shard of metal right through the head.

Roman took this opportunity to join Coma on the wall walk, his combat doll just finishing up with her final opponent, her bladed arms drenched with blood.

She didn’t show the normal signs of someone who had been in an intense fight.

There was no panting, no panicked look in her red eyes, nor was there any sweat or pulsing veins, no adrenaline dump.

“You’re beautiful,” Roman said, both of them turning to the courtyard.

“So are you.”

“This way, dum-dum!” Casper shouted, veering off to the left.

Casper and Jess had just passed through the hole Roman had cut into the wall when the fight kicked off. Jess skidded to a halt, begrudgingly following Casper to the left.

They traveled along the wall, keeping to the shadows as guards ran out to address the threat.

“Stay close!” Casper said.

“I’m in charge…”

“No, you’re not. I’m in charge here. I’m always this size. This is the first time you’ve been this size. Think about that. Think about who actually knows what’s going on here and how to operate in this environment. They must have trained you in situational awareness.”

“I…”

“Shut up,” Casper said as she grabbed Jess’s hand, running toward the swinging door. A lady charged out and lifted into the air, her wings expanding.

As she did so, Casper ran past the doorway, yanking Jess’s arm just in time to pull her to the right.

The two nearly missed another person charging out, utter chaos in the hallway as guards were handed weapons and exemplars made their way toward the exit, some taking the stairs, clearly going for the wall walk.

“We have to be careful,” Jess said, whipping her arm away from Casper.

“I’m serious, bitch—it’s about to get real in here. Really fucking real if you don’t keep up with me and let me do the heavy lifting. You heard Roman say that earlier, right? In this environment, I’m the heavy lifter.”

“Now’s not the time to talk!”

Another man ran past, a panicked look on his face.

“Most of them aren’t going to notice us,” Casper explained quickly. “People see what they want to see, and in a moment like this, all of them are focused on getting out that door and subsequently getting their asses handed to them by Roman and his combat pussy. I might not have mentioned it, but Coma and I aren’t exactly close. Celia I can tolerate, but she’s a brainwashed shell of a housewife with looks to match her dimwittedness, if that’s even a word.”

“We have to find them.”

“You’ve already said that. Pipe down and let’s do a little searching. We don’t need to be telepaths to find people in a prison the size of a city block, we just need to pay attention to our surroundings.” Casper looked around. “Um, how about this way?”

The two waited for an armed woman to run past before they took off down the hallway, keeping to the sidewall.

They continued forward, turning the corner into another hallway, where they hung a sharp left and Jess protested yet again.

“There’s a madness to my method!” Casper shouted as she grabbed her counterpart’s hand again, dragging her forward.

“You really don’t know what you’re doing…”

They stumbled into another hallway where they ran into a man, the guard stopping and looking down at both of them, his face a mask of surprise.

“Don’t even think about it, mister!” Casper told him, letting go of Jess’s wrist.

The man slowly lifted his wrist guard, unable to stop himself from asking, “What the fuck?”

“What the fuck is right!” Casper charged forward. She reached the man’s leg and used it to quickly scale up to his knee, then the front of his pants. He tried to swat her away, but her arm had already morphed into a blade, which she jabbed into his open palm.

The man pulled his hand back, shocked to see blood.

Casper scaled up his buttons, eventually reaching the opening at the top of his shirt. She lunged forward and drove one of her blades into his throat, the man instinctively latching on to her and tossing her into the wall.

But Casper was fast, able to turn in midair and use the wall as a springboard to jump back onto the man’s arm. She was up to his shoulder in a matter of seconds, diving forward with both bladed arms overhead.

“Argh!” he cried out, staggering to the side as she stabbed him in the neck.

Casper caught him a few more times, his throat now making a gargling sound as he tried to gasp for air. She looked at the ground and then glanced quickly at Jess, her mouth agape.

From there Casper made a running leap, landing in a roll.

“What are you waiting for?” Casper called over her shoulder. She continued down the hallway as a man fell to one knee, leaving a bloodied handprint against the wall as he tried to keep himself up.

Jess caught up with her, still unable to remove the look of shock from her face.

“That’s how you…”

“Yeah, that’s how I killed Kevin and that lady he was with. I think he was about to fuck her. I don’t know. It didn’t really matter to me then, and it certainly doesn’t matter to me now. You act like you’ve never seen a person my size knife someone in the neck until they died before.”

“Yeah, that’s safe to say.”

“Looks like we have a chance again,” Casper said as they moved on to another hallway, where a woman in armor was stepping out of a side office.

“A chance?” Jess asked.

“Before we kill you, which way to the recently captured Centralian prisoners?” Casper called out before the guard could properly notice her.

The woman let out a high-pitched yelp, taking a step back. Her first response was to activate an energy baton.

“That’s the best you can do?” Casper asked.

The woman hesitated for a moment, trying to decide how she would take on opponents that were so small.

“You’re going to regret this,” Casper said as she started charging toward the woman.

The prison guard swooped down, hoping to knock Casper to the side.

But the tiny doll was fast, able to leap over the attack and drive her bladed arms into the woman’s wrist.

The Eastern Province guard cried out, trying to shake her arm out while Casper held on for dear life.

Once she was able to, she used her sword arms to scale her way up to the woman’s armor and then climbed it until she reached the woman’s shoulder.

The guard dropped into the sidewall, the blood on her arm painting a horrific portrait as Jess morphed into a large metal clasp that attached itself to the wall and pinned the guard by her neck. The guard tried to pry it off, and as she did Jess started to tighten her grip.

There was a ledge on the clasp that Jess had made for Casper, and the tiny doll quickly took it, pointing her blades at the female guard’s eyes as her face started to turn red.

“Where are they?” Casper asked.

“Foreign nationals cell block…” the woman said, her voice quivering with terror.

Casper drove her blade into one of the woman’s eyes, then followed it up by doing the same to the other.

Jess tumbled to the floor, morphing back into a tiny sex doll.

“Did you have to do that?” Jess asked as the female guard fell forward, screaming. She crawled her knees, crying out again and again.

“If you’re looking for remorse, you’re talking to the wrong doll,” Casper said. “I’m not human. I don’t feel pain. But we can have that conversation later, if you’d like. Perhaps you can take me on a long walk and I can tell you my whole philosophy on life, why I don’t give two or even three shits about exemplars or non-exemplars alike. You included, chubby. But we can save that for a later date. Right now, I need you to turn into a vehicle.”

“Excuse me?”

“A trolley, dum-dum, just like the one we rode in on. We need to find the foreign nationals cell block.”

“I’m not turning into a trolley…”

“Come on, you know you want to! Something like a toy trolley. I’ll ride on top of you. We’ll go a lot faster that way. It’s that or a plastic horse…”

“I…” Jess shook her head. “Fine, step back.”

Casper moved aside, and Jess morphed into a miniature yellow trolley with a seat on top of it.

“A chair for me?” Casper said as she climbed aboard, then laughed. “Dreams really do come true. Go! Go! Go!”

Jess started driving forward, and when she got comfortable in this form she moved even faster, Casper’s hands no longer blades as she held on.

“Foreign nationals, foreign nationals… Faster, trolley slave!”

They came to a hallway with a sign telling them they were entering the prison.

“I think we’re getting closer,” Casper called down to Jess.

It took another hallway or two, but they eventually made it to a cellblock labeled FN.

“Foreign nationals,” Casper said. “I think we found it!”

Oddly enough, rather than bars protecting each of the cells, there were thick walls of glass with circular devices attached to their outer surfaces. A blinking green light on each device signaled that there was a person inside.

A few of the prisoners came to the glass, a man with reptilian skin catching Casper’s attention.

“Now that’s a face only a mother could love,” the tiny doll said, sticking her tongue out at the man and blowing raspberries. He punched the glass and the sound was muffled, the smooth surface clearly strong enough to withstand an attack from within.

“Miranda, Naomi!” Casper called out, even though it would have been impossible for them to hear the tiny doll through the glass. As they made their way down the hall, Casper still riding Jess as a trolley, a guard appeared. He had darkened skin, horns bulging out of his forehead, and no sclerae.

“One last guard,” Casper said, her arms morphing into blades again.

The man dropped to all fours and charged toward her.

But rather than being met by Casper’s blades, he collided with a solid column of metal and cracked his head against it, his neck snapping.

“That was my kill!” Casper told Jess as she morphed into her real form.

Jess ignored Casper and went to the cell that contained Miranda and Naomi. Both of them came to the front, Miranda with a surprised, almost angry look on her face.

“Well?” Casper called up to her.

“She’s not communicating mentally with me, which means…”

Jess looked at the circular device attached to the glass wall of the cell.

“Destroy it,” Casper said. “It’s clearly preventing them from using their powers within. Can you still use yours?”

Jess morphed her arm into a hammer and swung it at the device, shattering it.

“Looks like it,” she said as she placed her hand on the glass door, merging into it and creating an exit for Miranda and Naomi to step out of.

“It’s about time you two got rescued,” Casper said, beaming a smile at them with her hands on her waist.

Miranda ignored Casper and turned to Jess, who had just finished morphing back into her human form.

“You were authorized for this?” the telepath asked. She didn’t appear to have been roughed up at all, still in the clothing she’d worn back at the hotel.

“Of course not,” Jess said.

“You came here without authorization?” came Naomi’s question.

“Not by choice; it was Roman.”

“Roman?” Miranda gasped. “You’re being serious?”

“The guy’s moral compass is so broken that sometimes it randomly points him in the right direction. It was his idea. I was forced to come along. I’m still trying to adhere to our mission.”

The sounds of boots at the end of the hallway caught their attention, Miranda turning to see three guards running with energy batons in their hands.

They suddenly stopped and looked at each other, two of them proceeding to beat the living hell out of one another. The third went to one of the glass walls and bashed his head into it until there was a bloodied halo left on the glass.

“Roman is an idiot,” Naomi said.

“Roman’s not the idiot; you two are the idiots for getting caught,” Casper protested, no one paying attention to her.

“It’s kind of…” Miranda bit her lip. “No, you’re right. He wasn’t supposed to…”

Jess cleared her throat. “I hate to say he had good reasoning, but…”

Miranda looked at Jess. “What do you mean?” The telepath nodded, instantly reading the woman’s thoughts. “It makes sense…”

It only took a second for Miranda to transfer to Naomi what she had learned from Jess, that Roman had made his move so it would be coupled with the attack on the university.

“Where is he now?”

As if to answer their question, they heard a loud crunch outside to the northwest.

“He’s trying to save your asses,” Casper translated. “The longer you leave him out there, the harder it’s going to get.”

“I can start arranging teleportation to the embassy,” Jess offered.

“Good call,” said Naomi, “but let’s level the playing field some. What would happen if we added thirty to forty national exemplars to the fight?”

Miranda and Naomi turned to some of the other cells where the prisoners were already gathering, a few pounding on the glass to be let out.

“We’ll have to remove each of the circles,” Jess said. “They’re preventing power usage.”

Naomi lifted her hand and moisture filled the air, enough that it caused Miranda and Jess’s hair to suddenly appear wet.

The devices all fizzled out at once.

A few of the exemplars with heightened strength were able to smash through the glass walls, but rather than leave, they simply lined up, completely under someone’s spell.

“I still don’t understand what her power is,” Casper called up to the three, referring to Naomi.

“She can control water,” Jess replied hastily. “Down to the molecular level.”

A couple of the strongmen made their way down the hall, smashing through the glass walls while more exemplars lined up behind them, some from Centralia, the Northern and Southern Alliance, and the Western Province.

A bald man shook his head at Miranda as he approached her.

“That’s not going to work on me.”

“And? How long have you been here?”

“A year…” the prisoner admitted.

“Then it’s your choice to fight, if you’d like. But it sounds to me like you got a little angst to get out.”

He nodded, his eyebrows starting to arch. “That I do.”

Once all the prisoners were lined up, Miranda dispersed them, some of the exemplars bursting through the ceiling, others running into the hallways and from there to the other cell blocks.

“We don’t have long,” Naomi said.

Miranda shook her head, looking from Jess down to Casper. “No, we really don’t.”

Chapter Eighteen: Emboldened and Scolded

Roman was starting to feel overwhelmed.

No matter how many walls he brought up, there were always more assailants coming from different directions, exemplar and non-exemplar alike.

He wished at that moment that he had his power dial so he could gauge how close he was to overheating.

It had been a while since he’d had to think about the device, comfortable enough with his own ability now that he could sense when he was under too much pressure.

But here, as exemplars flew at him; as prison guards continued to shoot at him with their wrist devices; as he caught Coma spinning on the periphery, cutting through a crowd of men and women wielding energy batons; as explosions sounded off, dust and brick debris kicked up into the air; as people bled out, teleporters appeared, more mayhem converged on the location—Roman knew he had bit off more than he could chew.

But he had to hold strong.

He didn’t know why he trusted Casper, but he definitely trusted that Jess wouldn’t leave her companions in the prison. Roman had to believe they would eventually make it out to the courtyard, where a teleporter would take them away.

Roman didn’t tell himself to focus; he knew that now wasn’t the time to think about anything aside from handling the obstacles directly in front of them, like the man spiraling toward him who met his fate once Roman used the metal still on his fists to form a blade to drive through the man’s head, or the female teleporter who had appeared behind him before Roman choked her with her own clothing.

He had to be fluid.

It was only going to get more gruesome at this point, especially as he became desperate.

It startled Roman to see people in prison uniforms suddenly on the scene, coming out of some of the doors and engaging the guards.

More and more prisoners spilled out of Central Holding, wild looks on their faces.

A man with reptilian skin leaped on top of the building and landed in the midst of a crowd of guards with riot gear, unleashing his fury and tearing into them as they tried to beat him back with their batons.

A blast of oscillating energy cut across the courtyard, incinerating anyone in its path.

Some of the prison guards began fighting themselves, a few taking their own lives with their wrist guards.

The crowd parted as three women ran toward Roman.

He paused, and at that moment he felt his energy start to leave him, so much that he could barely stand.

But he still had opponents to handle.

Roman failed to stop the man coming at him from behind with an energy baton, and the prison guard cracked Roman across the back with it.

Roman hit the ground, the guard suddenly lying next to him, his head no longer attached to his body.

As Roman pressed himself back to his feet, he saw Coma standing over his opponent, blood dripping from her blade.

Her hand returned to its normal shape and she offered it to him.

“Thanks,” he said, the pain from the man’s energy baton instantly spreading over the tops of his shoulders.

He reached his other hand back to see that the baton had burned through his clothing, Roman wincing as his fingers touched a cauterized wound.

“That’s going to get infected,” Casper said. Roman glanced down just as she scaled his clothing, going back into his pocket.

The other three Centralian exemplars caught up.

“Are you okay?” Miranda asked, giving Roman a funny look as she took in the strange mask he’d fashioned over his face.

“I think…”

“You got hit,” Naomi said while Jess formed a solid cylindrical wall around them.

Roman could hear people trying to break through the wall on the outside, but the noises started to dissipate almost immediately as Miranda closed her eyes, pressing her hand against the wall Jess had morphed into.

“It’s bad,” Roman said, wincing again.

“You’ll heal,” Naomi said, the tone of her voice not quite as harsh as her statement sounded. “Consider it a reminder of what happens when you disobey orders.”

“There were no orders, you dumb bitch!” Casper shouted out to her. “And that is some thanks you’re giving us for saving your asses. Neither of you ever said thank you!”

“We can discuss this in a moment,” Miranda said, looking up as a ball of light began to form at the top of the cylinder Jess had created.

It shone so brightly that Roman had to cover his eyes.

When the brightness dissipated, they were standing in an authorized teleportation zone of the Centralian Embassy, statues in the far corners of the space featuring angels with swords and other iconography Roman never cared for.

All of them were safe, Roman the only one sustaining a wound.

“Glad that’s over,” Casper said, nearly jumping out of Roman's pocket.

He waved his hand over her form, instantly taking the tiny doll’s life away.

Roman knew he was going to get hell for it later, and he really appreciated what she had done, but he was suddenly experiencing a bit of nausea. Going from intense action to absolute tranquility definitely riled his system.

Coma was there in a heartbeat, Roman gently placing an arm around her shoulder, wincing again at the pain spreading across the top of his back.

“We need to do something about that,” Miranda said, a note of concern in her voice.

This concern hardened when she remembered where she was, and what her role was in coming to the Eastern Province.

She cleared her throat and turned to Naomi and Jess, who seemed to be focused on a side entrance to the embassy.

The door popped open on its own, Miranda waving them in.

After a deep breath out, Roman let go of Coma.

“I need to be able to do this on my own,” he said, accepting the pain as he had done back when he used to fight.

The attack from the energy baton was going to leave a nasty scar across the top of his back, but it would heal.

Roman was the last to step into the embassy, noticing that the inside resembled a building in Centralia with its red carpet and gold-framed pictures of past leaders, even the walls painted in a color that didn’t match the drab, dreary tones they used here in the East.

Had he not known where he was, Roman would have assumed he was in one of the nicer government offices in Centralia, the space not much different than the director’s suite at the immigration building.

Miranda took a right, and the five of them eventually came to a room with a large table inside where food and refreshments were laid out. A man sat at the other end of the table, his hands together in a prayer position, his fingers drumming against one another.

“Ambassador Darwin,” Miranda said.

The man didn’t stand to shake their hands or anything jovial like that. He merely looked at the seats around the table, nodding for them to sit.

The Centralian ambassador was a thin man with almost clear skin, clean-shaven, a stern look on his face, sunken eyeholes, and a smattering of brown and gray hair.

He kept his hands in the prayer position as he looked at Roman.

“Please, remove your mask.”

Roman used his power to remove his smock mask and did the same for Coma, the material from the smocks swirling together and forming a sphere on the table. In the time it took for him to do this, Jess went for some of the refreshments, handing a pitcher of tea to Miranda and Naomi.

“You have caused a war,” Ambassador Darwin said, his eyes still burning holes in Roman.

“I’ve done what I was supposed to do,” Roman said defiantly. “I got approval to bring down the buildings at the university. I’m sure you know that.”

“Of course I know that; I am part of the team that would give you approval,” Ambassador Darwin said bitterly.

“Then it wasn’t me who caused the war; it was you and the rest of our shadowy government.”

“You didn’t have permission to go after anyone in custody, team member or not.”

Roman shrugged, still feeling a bit sick to his stomach.

He’d had enough of this and was ready to cut the bullshit.

But he also knew he had to play ball a little bit longer, just a few more days.

“I believe it was the best action to take considering that the Eastern public will eventually lump these two attacks together,” he said, attempting to change his tone. “Rather than a separate attack, if that makes sense.”

“It does make sense, but it isn’t sense for you to make. Does that make sense?”

“Well, if you and whoever is making these decisions were sensible enough to make them, I would have received approval at the moment Miranda and Naomi were taken.”

“It was my fault we didn’t go through the chain of command,” Jess said, taking Roman off guard. “He pitched the idea; I told him it wasn’t going to work. Roman went with it anyway. Had we done things correctly, I could at least have gotten a denial. Then it would be on record. But as it stands…”

“Not getting an order isn’t an excuse for carrying out a suicide mission.”

“Since when has the Centralian government cared if any of us died or not?” Roman asked the ambassador, trying not to sound bitter. “And I’m being honest here. We are all disposable. The fact that you would leave two operatives in the custody of a foreign country is evidence of this.”

“You are not the person making decisions here,” Ambassador Darwin reminded Roman. “Well, let me rephrase that statement: you aren’t supposed to be the person making decisions here. That person is supposed to be me, and a select group in the intelligence community. There is a system in place for a reason. You continually subvert that system, at least based on your file.”

“I’m sure it seems that way…”

“It doesn’t seem that way. It is that way,” the man snarled. “But you already knew that, and the reason you’re in the position you’re in now is because of your previous decisions. You still have a mission to carry out. What will happen as a result of what you’ve done here today isn’t something I can talk about at this point, nor is it something I will play a part in deciding. But I’m sure there will be repercussions.”

Roman couldn’t help but shake his head, almost ironically. “There always are.”

“Moving on. There’s a protest planned at our gates in the next hour. We have to prepare the embassy and arrange press releases. Scolding you is the last thing I should be doing right now. Congratulations on wasting my time. Now, Naomi and Jess, the two of you will be sent back to Centralia via an intercountry teleporter. Miranda, you will stay here to help with crowd control and continue to communicate with Roman until he has left the country. When are you leaving the country?”

“Tomorrow,” Roman said, biting his lip.

“It would be nice to be able to commend you for the great work you have done in regards to disrupting the manufacturer of their newest devices,” the man said, “but I can’t do that because of what you have done since.”

Roman almost told him that in a way, Ambassador Darwin had just given him a compliment. Instead, he focused on a spot on the wall just above the ambassador’s head, no longer wanting to be the target of the man’s angry glare.

“I understand,” he finally said.

“Return to your hotel; do not go out or cause any more trouble. Continually report to Miranda. We do agree with you that streamlined removal of Nadine Unders would be better done in Centralia, so think about how you’re going to do that. Because the time is coming. The rest of you are dismissed aside from you, Miranda. Let’s chat a little bit more about how we can deal with this protest crowd. Roman, a teleporter will meet you and your doll in the hallway. Your other doll will be waiting there as well. I must say, until she fainted, Celia was a pleasure to have around.”

“Thanks.”

Ambassador Darwin took a deep breath in, his nostrils flaring open. “Goodbye, Roman.”

Chapter Nineteen: Tending the Garden

“I know who you are,” Nadine’s father told her suddenly.

“Come again?” Nadine asked, the two still sitting at the dining room table.

“Come with me,” her father said as he slowly stood.

“What?”

“I need to show you something.”

Nadine ignored the tingling sensation in her arms as she tried to contain the surprise she was feeling, the utter shock at hearing her father confess these words.

It was impossible. His mind had been wiped.

“What are you waiting for?” her father asked.

Nadine nodded, joining him in the hallway.

When they reached his bedroom, Nadine noticed all her mother’s clothing was on hangers. There were boxes stacked on the single chair in the room, as well as some of his wife’s items still scattered across the carpet.

Her father motioned Nadine into his closet, where she saw paint and wood shavings on the floor. A small compartment had been cut into the wall.

It looked like it had recently been opened.

“I installed this when you joined,” he said, reaching into the compartment. “I sealed it up, and it was hidden behind your mother’s clothing. I discovered it a few days ago, when I was going through her things.”

“I…”

“No need to say anything,” he said as he led her back to the bedroom, a few files in his hands. He sat on the bed and motioned for Nadine to sit next to him.

“I can’t…”

“It’s too late now,” he told her, an arc of light cutting through the bedroom at that moment as a cloud moved past the sun. “I know who you are; you are my daughter.”

He cleared his throat. A tear started to form until he wiped it away.

“Daddy,” Nadine said instinctively, tears rolling down her cheeks as well.

“I left myself a note,” he told her, showing Nadine the letter.

Even though her vision was now blurry, Nadine read the note from her father to himself, explaining that he had a daughter, that she was brave and that she’d joined the intelligence agency, that he knew the State would remove any memory of her.

“I believe I prepared this small packet right when you were joining up, before…” He brought his hand to the side of his head. “I really can’t remember very much, to be honest.”

“I know you can’t,” she said, her hand trembling now.

“They took it all. All the memories gone in a flash. I just have this,” he said as he shook the file letter.

There were other documents in there as well, which he gladly showed her. There was a sketch of the three, Nadine hardly recognizing the young girl depicted.

She didn’t have any pictures or sketches from her childhood, so seeing herself so young made all the blood drain from her body. She placed her palm on the bed to stabilize herself as her eyes turned to the mirror on the dresser.

Nadine saw herself as a woman, the necklace catching her attention, a reminder of what she was now capable of. From there she returned her gaze to her own face for just a moment, her dirty-blond hair a bit of a mess, her eyes heavier than the eyes of the young girl in the sketch.

“And here’s one of your essays from grade school,” he told her, handing it to Nadine.

Nadine felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience, that this had to be a dream. It was strange to see her own handwriting and realize how it had matured over the years. Her essay was about how she wanted to be an exemplar and help people, to save the world and bring prosperity to her country.

She shook her head as she handed it back to him, not able to finish it.

“And I have your birth certificate and another sketch,” he said, showing it to her.

In the sketch, Nadine and her parents were sitting in front of a tree with a hole carved in it large enough for people to walk through. She remembered having the sketch made, the landmark a popular spot in town where people used to have their pictures drawn.

“That’s about it,” he said sadly. “I don’t know if it is actually the case, but I believe I was in a bit of a rush when I put this little packet together. If there was anything good about your mother dying, it was discovering this. I don’t have the memories to go along with it, but…”

“Daddy,” Nadine said, springing forward and hugging him.

He hesitated for a moment before finally placing his hand on her back, bringing her in close.

“You can’t know this information,” she told him, her lips quivering. “They’re going to…”

“I don’t care what they do anymore,” he told her. “Fuck them. Fuck them all to hell.”

She pressed away from him, steeling herself. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Everything has already happened to me. I lost my wife, and I found my daughter. That’s enough for one lifetime, don’t you think?” He smiled at Nadine, his eyes filling with hope despite the tragedy of his statement. “I don’t know what you’re planning today or why you came here, but how about sticking around? One night. You can sleep in your old room. At least I think that was your room.”

“It was,” Nadine said softly.

“We can cook dinner together, and you can try to catch me up on some of these memories I should be having. Maybe you can tell me what you’re up to as well.”

“What makes you think I’m up to something?” she asked.

“How many times have you visited me?”

“Just a couple.”

“And were you always about to make an important decision or take an extreme action at those times?”

Nadine slowly nodded.

“I figured as much,” he said with a chuckle. “Your mother was like that, you know. Getting sentimental at the last moment. She was a wonderful woman, an absolutely perfect wife. And I can tell you about her as well, how she was in her final days. What do you say? Will you stay?”

“I think I can do that,” Nadine finally told him.

Her father gestured toward the door.

“So let’s do it—let’s get some dinner going. I know there are some vegetables I need to pick from the garden. Maybe you can help me with that. You know, there really isn’t anything like growing your own vegetables. It takes some time to get used to it, and it takes some time to get it right, but much could be said for tending your own garden.”

Nadine nodded. “I feel like I’ve heard that before.”

“That’s because I’ve been saying it since I started that damn garden!”

Nadine laughed. “I remember.”

“I’m sure you do. Let’s cook one of your mother’s recipes tonight. She managed to write them all down, you know.”

“Okay,” Nadine said, thinking of Roman in that moment.

Nadine had planned on going back to him today, continuing what they were in the process of pulling off.

But all that could wait.

She had a feeling this would be the last sane moment she’d have for the next few weeks.

Possibly for the rest of her life.

“I’m already bored,” Paris the doll said. “How long do we have to be here again?”

“At some point, they have to connect to Centralia through this station,” Margo explained. “So we’re going to be here until they do.”

“How are we going to know it’s them?”

“They should be pretty easy to recognize. We’ve both seen Roman before. He has white hair and orange eyes. Just like my…”

Margo still couldn’t find it in herself to call the man that had raped her by the word “father.” And she wondered in that moment, as they hid in the rafters of the Eastern Mane station, if she had other half-brothers and half-sisters in Centralia and the West.

“I can’t wait to get this over with.”

“When did you become so impatient?” Margo asked her doll.

The space she had carved out for them in the rafters was relatively comfortable. There was a lot of room up there, including some old storage units that hadn’t been used for years. It was in one of these units that Margo chose to bunker down. With a wall facing the tracks below, Margo could merge her power into its surface every time a train came by, giving her a bird’s-eye view of the people exiting.

“And what if they come back by teleportation?” Paris asked. She was lying in Margo’s lap, looking up at her, Margo lightly touching her doll’s cheek.

“We will wait a few days, and then we’ll go from there,” Margo said. “It’s all about patience at this point, dear.”

“Patience is so boring,” Paris said, offering Margo a playful pout.

Margo’s stomach grumbled. This was one problem with being in a body rather than a completely inanimate object. There were still bodily functions to deal with, and she still needed carbohydrates.

“I can get something for you,” Paris said.

“Can you get something for me without killing anyone?”

Paris grinned at Margo. “I can’t guarantee that.”

“The station should be shutting down soon, and once it does, we can go down to the food court and see what we find. How’s that?”

“Or I could go for you…”

“We can’t bring attention to ourselves now, sweetie,” Margo said. “This is it, or at least it’s coming.”

“The moment we’ve been waiting for?”

“Exactly.”

“Why do you want to kill Roman?”

Margo heard a train coming, and rather than answer Paris she closed her eyes, pressing her back against the wall as her eyes opened up on the other side.

Paris was still talking to her, but her voice was muffled now as Margo focused on the people getting out of the train.

She saw a man and a woman with white hair, but the man was much shorter than Roman, fatter too.

It took a good five minutes for all the people to file off the train, and once they did, attendants at the station came to make their various checks. Margo returned her consciousness to her body.

“Sorry,” she told Paris. “But I have to check every time.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Why do you want to kill Roman?” Paris asked.

“What started off as nonsensical has now become an ultimate goal. Does that make sense?”

“A goal because why?”

“You ask a lot of questions, dear. After Malus died of old age…” Margo swallowed hard, wishing she had been the one who had killed her teacher.

No, Margo had a feeling it had been her government, that they had poisoned him. There was no way they would have come at him and been able to take him down.

She was sure of this.

“Yes?”

“After Malus died of old age, I thought I was the only person left with my ability. And then I heard about Roman. I liked being the only one. I know this isn’t a reason to go after someone, but the hunt quickly interested me. Roman seems to be involved in a lot of different things, and in a way, killing him became, at least in my head, my final act before disappearing.”

“Do you want to die?”

Margo considered the answer to this question for a moment. “I’m already dead. I suppose I could die for good, and maybe I will choose to do that one day. But no—right now, I don’t want to die. I do want to be the only one, and I want to cause as much chaos as I can while I’m still alive. This whole world and all the turmoil Centralia has caused, each of the Provinces have caused, the Alliances too, all of it deserves to be prodded to the point of injury. And that’s what I’m going to do. They made me like this.”

“Your own government…”

“They turned me into this monster, broke me, raped me, subjected me to some of the most horrific things you can subject the person to, and then I was supposed to just sit idly by, to accept everything and fall back into my rank, move up the chain of command, forget about the past?”

“But you can’t forget.”

“No, no I cannot,” Margo said firmly. “So I guess that answers your question. My desire to kill Roman is due to the hunt involved, the players at stake, and…”

“And what?” Paris asked after Margo didn’t say anything.

“And to enjoy the aftermath.”

“I think you’re so sexy.”

Margo began stroking the side of Paris’s face again. “I think you’re sexy as well. You’ve quickly become my favorite creation.”

“I’m glad you created me. And once all this is done, I hope we can get some things.”

Margo tried to grin, her cheek twitching. “Things like what?”

“A baby. A horse.”

“A baby and a horse?”

“We can get out of here,” Paris said, “go somewhere far off the grid. You still have to eat, but I don’t. I guess the baby will have to eat too, but that’s okay. There are so many options for us.”

“There really are. We just need to see this through, and once it is done, I promise you we’ll get out of here, as far away from Centralia as possible. The best place for us to go would probably be the Northern Alliance. It’s the country where people go to disappear, no extradition treaties—not that those matter—and it has some very remote cities. It will be easy for us to get settled. But we have to behave if we do that.”

“No killing?”

Margo shook her head. “Less killing. We won’t want to draw attention to ourselves. I’m sure there will have to be some killing along the way, but once we get where we’re going, we need to seem normal.”

“Then we should get the baby before we go there.”

“Yes, but perhaps we should get something a little bit older than a baby, something that doesn’t require milk.”

“A toddler?”

“That could work. Or maybe an orphan. Like me. Yes,” Margo said, her voice lowering as she imagined rescuing an orphan. “An orphan would be best. Just as long as they’re not too old—we don’t want them to understand what we are.”

“But we’ll be normal.”

“But not at first. So a young orphan.”

“A girl or a boy?”

“We’ll just have to see what’s at the orphanage,” Margo told her doll.

“What do you want to name it?”

“If it’s a boy, we can name it Destry. If it’s a girl, we can name it Amethyst.”

“Pretty names. Really pretty names. What if we got twins?” Paris asked.

“Let’s just keep it to one orphan, dear,” Margo told her.

Her stomach grumbled again.

“You sound very hungry.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t wait to get our child, to be mothers together. We can deal with the horse later, once we get where we’re going.”

“Yes, yes we can,” Margo finally said. “I can’t wait.”

Chapter Twenty: Apple Pastries

“I see…” Roman told Nadine.

The dreamscape was the vast, blackened hills in the distance with stars twinkling, an entire galaxy above them, dark green with purple hues twisting in the air.

Abby was there, the dreamwalker standing with her head bowed slightly, a focused look on her face.

She wore all white this time, a pantsuit of sorts with shiny white loafers offset by black laces. The dreamwalker had a fedora on her head, her hair pulled into a short tight ponytail sticking out the other side.

In this space, Roman looked less troubled then Nadine was used to seeing him.

The stress was gone from his face, his smile and teeth brighter, his orange eyes practically glowing.

“I’m still sad you have to do it,” he said.

“If I don’t, someone else will come and it will be much worse.”

“I can help some,” Abby said.

Nadine shook her head. “No. We’ve discussed it, and while I appreciate your offer, it is better for this to be done now, in this way.”

“I understand,” the dreamwalker said.

“We won’t have much time once we get back to Centralia,” Nadine reminded Roman. “And we need to be ready once we reach Eastern Mane. We’ll be able to join them, but only if it doesn’t seem like they’ll get caught up in whatever happens next.”

Roman nodded. “That’s the last thing we want.”

Nadine had to chuckle. “There are a lot of last things we want. This is yet another one of the ways it could all go wrong.”

“But there is always this place,” Abby reminded them. “If the worst happens, I can keep both of you here.”

“It isn’t so bad,” Roman said, waving his hand to the right, a building starting to form. He wiped it away as if his palm were an eraser and the space before him was a chalkboard.

“Like I’ve told you before, others seem to enjoy it.”

“We will make it through this,” Nadine said.

“But we’ll still need the paperwork.”

“I can handle that,” she told Roman. “I have another spot.”

“You’re just hiding things all over Centralia, aren’t you?”

Nadine approached Roman, allowing him to slowly wrap his hand around her waist. She then proceeded to pinch him, Roman pretending like she’d hurt him.

“You two are ridiculously adorable,” Abby told them. “I might need some of this paperwork as well, if things get really bad.”

“We can leave some for you,” Nadine told her. “It will be at one of the stations.”

“You may have to change your appearance a bit to make it match, but you seem to like to dress up.”

Abby smiled. “You know me so well.” The dreamwalker began lifting into the air. “I suppose we should adjourn this meeting. I hope to see you both soon.”

Nadine blinked her eyes open, the dream that had just played out a bit foggy.

It took her a moment to adjust to the light, her old bedroom much brighter than the hotel room. It was probably due to the large windows, the light wallpaper with a flower pattern along its outer edges.

Since her bedroom was now an office, she had slept on a futon on the floor, and her lower back tightened just a bit as she sat up. She groaned, placing her hand on her spine for a moment, massaging it as she yawned.

Nadine stepped out into the kitchen to see that her father had laid out breakfast for her, bread and a mixed berry jam he had made himself. She looked from the bread and jam to the weapon on the dining room table.

Nadine sat and slowly prepared a piece of bread with jam on it, spreading it to each of the edges, making sure it was evenly coated.

She took her first bite, the flavor of the fruit unlike the processed stuff she had grown used to in Centralia.

It brought back memories, made her feel like she was eleven years old, helping her father pick the fruit from the trees in their backyard, getting sour raspberries from the forest in the special places he had discovered over the years.

Nadine ate another piece and then prepared a cup of tea.

She went to the back door and stepped outside, enjoying the sunshine.

Nadine sipped her tea as she watched the light breeze blow up some of the fallen leaves. A squirrel twisted around a knot on a tree trunk while a bird with white feathers landed on a limb in the distance, pecking at the branch.

She inhaled deeply, enjoying the smell of the woods and the soil, a sweet scent in the air wafting from a few flowers hanging from a trellis her father had made years ago.

Nadine wished she could stay here forever, that she could live here without worrying about the impending war and the technological disruption to come.

For the rest of her life, however long that was, she would be on the run.

And she knew no matter how far away she made it, there would always be someone looking for her.

But at least she could spare that same fate for her father.

Nadine finished her cup of tea and returned to the kitchen, where she picked up the wrist guard and strapped it on her arm. Once it was on, the dial set to lethal, she made her way to her father’s bedroom.

She knocked lightly.

He didn’t respond, and after waiting a minute, she knocked again.

She slowly opened the door and stepped into the room.

Nadine found her father sitting on his bed, his back against the backboard, a pillow under his knees.

His arms were tense, his eyes closed, his breaths short.

Nadine fired two shots, the first into his chest, the second between his eyes.

She looked away immediately, lowering her weapon, ashamed at what she had just done.

But it was what they had discussed.

Had she not done it, someone else would have, and as her father had said last night while they prepared a meal together, he was too much of a chickenshit to do it himself.

He had tried since her mother died, which was why he had the wrist guard in the first place.

But Nadine’s father never could bring himself to do it.

It was over a single glass of wine after dinner that he had asked Nadine to handle it for him.

They discussed how they would do it, and the signal of two knocks followed by a pause and then two more knocks had been agreed upon.

And as horrible as Nadine should have felt, a small part of her was experiencing a deep sense of relief.

She had relieved her father of his burden of being alive, prevented her country from hurting him, and had allowed him to save his dignity by not forcing him to do it himself. She’d also honored his wish of dying in the same bed her mother had died in.

Nadine had thought about this very moment before going to bed the previous night, wondering how she would react, if she would find herself crying or not able to do it in the end.

But Nadine was a trained killer.

And once she reminded herself of this, recalling the countless times she had taken people’s lives, she knew it would come naturally to her when the time came.

No matter how morbid or how painful, she would persevere.

Nadine never looked back to her father as she left the room, returning to the kitchen, where she set the wrist guard back on the table.

She thought about collecting something from the home, a piece to remember it by, but there really was nothing small enough for her to conceal or keep track of for the time being.

So she took the jam.

Nadine left her childhood home, the jam and her father’s wrist guard in her bag as she made her way to the bakery she had visited the previous day. She bought more of the apple pastries, the woman bagging them up for her, a smile on her face as she handed the bag over.

“I hope to see you again soon,” she said.

Nadine tried to smile at the woman, and when she couldn’t, she simply looked away.

“Thanks,” she told the baker as she reached the door.

Chapter Twenty-One: Shower Tryst

Roman was startled by a knock at the door.

Coma slipped out of bed, her arm morphing into a blade. She was topless, only a pair of panties on, and Roman instinctively motioned for her to wait a moment as he took the life from Celia with a wave of his hand.

It’s me.

“Miranda?” Roman whispered.

He nodded for Coma to make herself presentable, the doll’s arm morphing back into its normal shape before she slipped into her dress.

Roman went to the door and, after smoothing his hands over his sleep shorts—which he realized was stupid—he opened the door.

“What are you doing here?”

“You said she would be gone,” Miranda told him as she pressed inside, her lavender scent reaching Roman’s nostrils.

He didn’t remember her wearing this perfume in the Western Province, but she certainly liked to use it when she was coming to see him for illicit reasons.

“But she should be back any minute…”

“Put your dolls to sleep,” Miranda said, nodding her chin at Coma.

His combat doll took a seat in the chair, Roman begrudgingly taking her power away.

“Happy?”

“You, me, bathroom.”

“Why the bathroom?”

“Are you really this dimwitted?” Miranda placed her hand behind his neck and brought him in for a strong kiss. She pulled back, wincing. “Ugh, your morning breath.”

“I can take care of that,” Roman said as he turned to the restroom. “And why here?”

“So if Nadine comes, you can figure out a way to get her out of the room and I can sneak out.”

“Did you really have to come?” Roman asked as Miranda shut the bathroom door behind her and pointed at the toothbrush. “Brush, and yes. It’s been too long.”

“It’s just been a few days…”

But Roman found himself obediently doing what the telepath had ordered him to do, brushing his teeth and from that point, hopping into the shower and cleaning off. He pissed as well while he was in there, Miranda sitting on the toilet and talking to him as he bathed.

“I have something else to tell you,” she said once Roman shifted the shower curtain to the side.

“Yeah?”

“It can wait. But not much longer. I’m sorry, Roman.”

The telepath was nude now, seated on the toilet seat and touching herself.

Roman stepped forward, his erection starting to grow.

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re completely in charge now,” he said, realizing his voice wasn’t quite his own, that Miranda was manipulating him.

Roman obediently got on his knees and brought his face forward, burying it in her sex. Miranda placed a hand on the back of his head and pushed him in just a little further, eventually wrapping her legs around his shoulders, Roman struggling to breathe.

After she finally let him take a deep breath, the blue-haired telepath shoved him backward, Roman moving his knees out from beneath him so he ended up in a seated position.

Miranda crawled down from the toilet and took him in her mouth, mentally speaking to him while she gave Roman a blow job.

I don’t normally do this for guys.

Ease up a little on the teeth…

She bit down playfully on the head of his penis.

I was just joking with you, Roman thought to her.

I figured as much. Does it feel good?

You’re mostly in control of my senses at the moment. Care to give me a little bit of my own consciousness back?

I suppose, but I’m going to use it later. And don’t go in my mouth. Not yet. I’m not done with you.

Got it, Roman thought to her as some of the feeling returned to his groin area. He placed a hand on the back of her head, Miranda responding to his touch and letting him take over.

She was much more resilient than he would have expected her to be, her head moving faster and faster, up and down, Roman not knowing how hard he should take it.

However you’d like, she thought to him.

It took a lot of control at that point for Roman not to start thrusting his hips forward, really trying to see what she could handle. Instead, he focused on the arch of her back, the way her ass was jutting up in the air, close to the toilet bowl seat.

He kept alternating between looking at her gracious curves and her face. Her eyes bulged a little as she started to gag, the telepath recovering and using her hand for a moment.

Roman felt Miranda take control again as she righted herself, the telepath slowly moving her sex down onto his member, easing his penis in.

All he could do was watch as this point as Miranda took over completely, Roman’s hand came up to her throat and squeezed as she threw her body into his, the back of his head occasionally tapping against the wall.

His thumb grazed against her chin and eventually pressed into her mouth, Miranda sucking it as she continued to drive her hips forward.

She spat his thumb out and made a face like she was orgasming, Roman could barely hear it now, almost as if he were experiencing the entire thing with earplugs in.

Miranda changed their tempo to something less primal, Roman lying down completely as she repositioned herself with her back to him.

Everything came back to him all of a sudden, the sounds in the room, the smells, her wetness— all of it as Miranda gasped, moved off Roman and turned to him, a finger on her lips.

Nadine is back.

The telepath didn’t seem scared about this; no, she seemed excited, even more turned on than she had been before.

“Roman? Are you in there?”

“Just about to take a shower,” he called to Nadine.

Miranda slowly lowered her hand onto his penis again. She began jerking Roman off as he spoke to Nadine through the door.

“How long do you think it will be?”

“Just a few more minutes. Why don’t you go down to get breakfast?”

“I brought us pastries. We need to talk…”

“Don’t,” Roman whispered to Miranda, tapping on his temple.

Don’t try to check her thoughts, he mentally reminded her. She will know. She’s trained.

I know that, you idiot. Keep talking to her.

“How was your trip?” Roman asked aloud as Miranda slowly got back on his penis, Roman careful not to rub the wound on his back against the floor.

“It was… eventful. I’ll stop bothering you,” said Nadine. “Don’t take too long.”

Turn on the shower, Roman thought to Miranda.

Fine, fine, she thought back to him as she got off his erection. She tiptoed over to the shower and flicked it on.

Her voice appeared in the back of his head. Just once more for me, and then you can go, and then I have something I need to tell you.

Okay, Roman thought back to her.

Miranda crouched around him now, touching herself as she took control of Roman’s mind again. She eventually bit her lip, her face turning red as she tried to contain a squeal.

His consciousness returned to him, and as it did Miranda started sucking him off, this time faster than before.

She didn’t have to think anything to him.

Roman came, Miranda swallowing all of it and then wiping her chin as she moved to the shower. She motioned for Roman to join her, which he did, still trying to catch his breath.

The embassy is going to try to kill you and Nadine while you’re still in the East, Miranda thought to him.

“What?” Roman asked aloud.

That was the decision they made this morning. I don’t know when they’re coming.

Why are you here? he thought back to her, regaining his composure a little. You’re telling me this now?

Because I want to see you one last time. It’s selfish, I know, and I wanted to warn you. I know you have other plans…

No, I don’t, Roman thought back to her.

I don’t know what your other plans are, but I can sense them. And I’m not going to tell the embassy that. I wanted to give you a head start.

But they could be here at any moment.

I don’t think they’ll be coming this early…

Roman shook his head, some commotion in the hallway meeting his ears.

Miranda’s eyes went wide. “No…” she whispered.

“Get dressed,” Roman said, tossing the shower curtain aside.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Holes in the Walls

The front door of the room exploded open.

Wanting to get Miranda away from whatever was about to happen, Roman opened up a hole in the floor. The plumbing twisted away and water veins burst as the bathroom below them became visible.

Go! he thought to Miranda as he stretched his hands toward a towel hanging from the rack, the towel quickly slithering to the floor and then to Roman, forming a pair of terrycloth shorts.

Miranda didn’t comment on what he was wearing; she was already diving down to the room below, still naked.

Rather than go through the door of the bathroom, especially as he knew it was a chokepoint, Roman formed a hole in the wall large enough for him to see Coma, whom he immediately gave life to.

Nadine was just pressing herself up from a hiding place behind one of the beds when Coma ran forward, both her arms morphing into blades.

Roman gave power to Celia, who also formed blades.

“We know you’re in there!” a man shouted from the hallway outside the room. “Come out willingly and we’ll make this easy!”

“Fuck that,” Roman said as he looked at his jacket, which hung on the ends of one of the chairs. Casper popped out, the tiny doll scaling down to the floor. She ran in Coma’s direction as well, fearless as ever despite her size.

Ice began to spread into the room, Casper and Coma both slipping.

A fist from out of nowhere struck Roman in the face, sending him flying into the sidewall.

Nadine, who was now putting on a wrist guard she’d had in her bag, pressed the button on the bottom of her Zero Ring.

A man who appeared to be on the verge of striking her stumbled forward.

Nadine sank a fist into his face, the once-invisible man falling onto her bed and then bouncing off, trying to recover.

She was on top of him in a matter of moments, pressing her wrist guard into the back of his head even though it wasn’t properly attached yet. She fired her shot, the man’s skull now a splatter of blood, bones, and brain matter.

“We have to fight them,” Nadine told Roman. With her hand in the air, she showed him she was deactivating her ring.

“Yeah,” he said as he used the bed to help himself up, his jaw aching from the cheap shot. “It’s my own government,” he hissed at her, noticing the Centralian exemplar uniform Nadine’s headless assailant wore.

Nadine turned to the front of the room, where Coma was waiting for an opening to tear into the hallway.

Roman came around the corner and decided to make that easier for her.

He no longer cared, especially now that the Centralian government was trying to remove him.

He swept his hand wide and the entrance to the room ballooned in size, the walls crunching all around them. Casper and Coma ran out just before a woman with charged hands fired another shot into the room.

Her blast went wide, tearing through the window in the outer-facing wall.

A piercing sound met Roman’s ears, throwing off his concentration and sending him to the ground as he tried to cover his head, Nadine following suit.

Celia, who was still standing near the bed and somewhat prone, looked through the hole that had just been blasted in the wall at a woman hovering outside, the woman’s mouth wide open.

Celia bolted toward the woman, leaping at the last moment and meeting the exemplar with her bladed arm, her weapon going straight through the woman’s chest.

The sound-manipulating exemplar started screeching and then let out a low utterance that shook the foundation of the building, the structure of the hallway starting to give way.

As Celia and the exemplar spiraled toward the ground, the exemplar’s power continued to bring the building down, floor by floor, until the entire quadrant was a collection of rubble, burst pipes, smoke and, somewhere buried underneath it all, Roman and Nadine, Coma and Casper, and Miranda.

It was a miracle that Roman and Nadine hadn’t been crushed by the weight of the floor above.

Something about the way the sound manipulator’s attack had shifted most of the destruction forward had created an epicenter for the damage closer to the opposite side of the hallway in the rooms toward the middle of the hotel.

The only thing on top of Roman was a mattress, which he was easily able to push away with his powers.

Still in the terrycloth shorts he’d crafted from the towel, Roman took control of his environment and found that Nadine was also safe.

She came into his arms for a moment, the two of them hugging amidst the rubble.

“I can’t believe we survived that,” Roman said.

“What happened?”

“Sound manipulator… Type II Class C; I think Celia took her out.”

A wall of ice cut through some of the debris, Roman barely able to stop it before it reached them.

The ice lifted from beneath them, forming a cocoon around Roman and Nadine.

Roman’s first action was to shatter the ice, only to have it reform again.

The ice was opaque, so he couldn’t see where their opponent was; all he could do was continually use his power to stop it from crushing him and Nadine. Roman was growing increasingly cold now, especially with what he was wearing.

Her teeth chattering, Nadine started firing her wrist guard at the ice walls that were closing in, the cocoon now suspending them in the air. This did little aside from creating a misting of ice.

Roman wished he could take Coma’s body, but he didn’t know where she was in the rubble, and he was so concentrated on preventing the ice from reaching him that he didn’t want to disrupt that process.

Things were starting to get colder and colder, the subzero temperatures inside the cocoon really affecting Roman and Nadine.

Every time he tried to take hold of the ice walls, they thickened, Roman never fully able to manipulate them.

He focused all his power into shooting a hole through the ice directly in front of him, and he’d nearly made it to the other side when the iced thickened again, crackling as it filled the hole he’d just made.

Now shivering, Nadine and Roman tried the same thing together this time, the Eastern Spy using her wrist guard while Roman concentrated his power forward.

It nearly made it to the other side, but again, the ice cocoon reformed.

The two were hugging now, trying to use their shared warmth to keep them alive, everything starting to go dark when suddenly the ice cocoon started to shatter.

It first gave way beneath their feet, Roman preventing a collision with the ground by lifting up a section of the collapsed wall to catch them.

He looked toward the center of the hotel to see a naked and bloody Miranda with her back to him, the telepath standing over the ice user.

“Who’s that?” Nadine started to ask.

Miranda was just turning to Roman when a blast of energy cut through her.

The bottom half of her torso was left standing for just a moment before falling to the side, a woman with a charged hand coming into Roman’s view.

It was a cheap shot, but Roman was going to take it.

Yet in the end, he didn’t have to.

The woman began struggling, slapping at her own body.

Roman wasn’t too far away to see that it was Casper, stabbing her way up the woman’s body and reaching her neck.

Coma wasn’t far off, his combat doll finishing the job Casper had started.

Even from where he was standing, a good fifty feet away from the action, Roman could still hear Casper bitching at Coma for taking her kill.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Nadine said, running her hand through her hair as she let out a sigh of exasperation.

“We really do.”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Coordinated Attack

Roman and Nadine quickly found Celia, who was all right aside from the fact that her arms were covered in blood all the way up to her elbows.

“That was amazing,” Roman told her as he hugged the doll, squeezing her tightly.

Coma caught up with their small group, Casper begrudgingly in her front pocket.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Casper started to say, her complaint cut short when a portal opened, indicating that a massive teleportation event was occurring.

A team of men and women in Eastern Province military gear dropped out of the portal, all of them with wrist guards attached.

More started to appear and fly out of the portal, some by means of technology while others were actual exemplars.

“We need to run,” Nadine said, grabbing Roman’s wrist.

“Let’s at least make it easier for our escape.”

Roman took control of the debris and sent it forward like a tidal wave, bringing most of their incoming attackers to the ground.

“Get those fucks, Roman!” Casper shouted.

Some of the detritus also filtered into the portal, Roman not sure if it reached the other side or not.

It didn’t matter.

By this point they were running, Coma staying back to fend off anyone who made it through Roman’s opening attack.

He shouted her name, letting her know they didn’t need a guard at the moment—they needed to get away.

It only took a moment for Coma to catch up with Roman. He began raising the ground beneath them, bits of rubble spritzing the air every time one of the flying exemplars fired upon them as they continued to rush forward.

To make their small group harder to hit, Roman also brought up random walls made of pavement, sending ripples through the streets. He lifted pillars and tore a few of the trees up as well, animating their limbs, all in an effort to create numerous targets and distractions.

His group now ran along the platforms he’d lifted from the ground, Nadine shooting one of the high flyers down with her wrist guard.

Nadine an expert shot as always, her blast connected, and the flying exemplar spiraled into a concrete wall.

Growing his platforms even higher now, and starting to feel the strain, Roman eventually reached a rooftop, where he and Nadine were able to pause for a moment and take stock of how many opponents they had on their tail.

“Can you order a teleporter?” Roman asked over his shoulder, tracking one of the exemplars making a beeline toward them.

It was something he had never really tried before.

Roman focused on the exemplar’s quadrant in the sky and took control of the parapet of a building she was flying by, missing her on his first attempt but connecting with the woman on his second try. He managed to blindside her, the woman zipping toward the ground below.

Nadine shook her head. “We’re going to have to get somewhere a little further away from the epicenter of all this for me to call a teleporter.”

“I figured as much,” Roman said as he looked to the other side of the building, noticing there were taller buildings next to it and beyond that, the Quad they had been at a day ago.

“Stop standing around and do something!” Casper shouted from Coma’s front pocket.

“We can disappear,” Roman said suddenly. “We just need to cause more destruction before we do. That should throw them off a little bit.”

“All right,” Nadine said. “I’ll leave you to that then.”

Roman looked down at the street below and saw that a trolley had stopped, the passengers long gone.

“Coma, take Celia.”

His combat doll lifted Celia just as Roman took her power away along with Casper’s.

Focusing on the trolley again, Roman raised the front end of it like a snake, then snapped it forward and lifted it again once he got better control over it.

He sent the animated trolley racing forward, its tail flying off the tracks as it collided with some of the rubble of the hotel, its middle section lifting and buckling back down.

Again wishing he had his power meter so he could gauge how much juice he was using, Roman flung the trolley’s middle cabin to the right, tearing it away from its counterparts and taking out a storefront.

The few exemplars who were still in the air saw this and immediately made their way down, only two of them continuing to fly toward Roman’s location.

Still in control of the trolley, Roman lifted his hand in the direction of the two flying exemplars coming toward the rooftop, ignoring the fact that he was now prone and they could blast him.

The first one dropped from the sky, Roman collapsing her heart. The second one managed to fire on Roman, his shot going wide but still causing Roman to cringe. His action set a spark down his back, Roman feeling the laceration at the tops of his shoulders.

He focused even harder, a vein pulsing on the side of his head as he took hold of the man’s body and broke all his bones, the man immediately falling out of the air.

“That should… that should do it,” Roman said, feeling weak now and finding it harder and harder to stand.

“Let’s go,” Nadine told him as she let Roman place his arm around her shoulders, leading him to the other side of the roof.

Roman took hold of the building material and lowered them to the ground, where Nadine led him and Coma into an alley. From there, they made it through another alley to the door of a restaurant and bar.

“This may have to do,” Nadine said.

“Right.”

Roman used his power to break the lock, the door squeaking open.

Nadine ran in first, her wrist guard drawn.

Roman heard a blast followed by another, and as he came in he saw she had taken out the bartender. But rather than kill him, Nadine had set her weapon to stun, the man now in the kitchen with drool dripping from his lips as he lay on the ground staring absentmindedly at the wash bin.

“I can take her…” Roman told Coma, who was still holding Celia in her arms.

“No, I’ve got it.”

“I can give her power.”

“Just rest,” his combat doll said, concern flitting across her red eyes.

“Yeah,” Roman told her once they reached the front of the bar.

Roman plopped down onto a leather chair, careful of his back. He took a deep breath in and shook his hands out.

“The teleporter should be here soon,” Nadine told him.

“Well, I guess our cover is blown,” Roman said bitterly, now reeling from the adrenaline dump.

“Not only is your country trying to kill us, but mine is too.” Nadine couldn’t help but smirk. “Fucking figures. And apparently, they are working together.”

“Yeah, figures. We were close, though.”

“We weren’t just close—it’s going to happen. Trust me, Roman,” she assured him. “They were just trying to clean up the pieces by getting rid of us. But they’re not going to really do that, and public sentiment is already calling for war.”

A black sphere appeared in the air, a pair of white-gloved hands pressing out of it. The gloved hands continued to stretch the sphere until it was large enough for a person to step out of, and a woman did just that.

“Whew, this area sure is difficult to teleport to right now,” the teleporter said.

“Something happened,” Nadine told her, purposefully being vague.

“Well, step on in.”

The female teleporter motioned toward the black oval she had spawned.

Roman looked at Coma and nodded.

Nadine was the first to enter, followed by Coma and Celia, the teleporter commenting on Roman’s second doll as her eyes clearly landed on Celia’s blood-soaked arms.

“Don’t worry about her,” Roman said, offering the teleporter a look that told her great harm would come to her if she asked any questions.

The woman swallowed hard, immediately looking away. “Please,” she said, motioning him again toward the black oval, her voice quivering. “I can’t keep it open forever.”

The teleporter stepped into her black hole, disappearing again.

Nadine immediately summoned another teleporter, this one appearing in the form of a butterfly before morphing into an eccentrically dressed man in a skirt and a turquoise top.

Roman barely had a chance to gauge his surroundings, which looked to be a city setting of sorts. The man’s wings had already grown to full size and when he batted them once, a cloud of sparkling dust reached Roman, Nadine and his dolls.

They appeared in what looked almost like a village, Roman glancing around with the hope it would be labeled.

He knew this wouldn’t likely be the case, especially in a country that rarely had advertisements, and he wasn’t able to spot anything as the teleporter left and yet another one appeared, this one sprouting like a mushroom.

Roman felt himself shrinking until suddenly he was full-size again, his group in yet another location as the man returned to mushroom form and disappeared.

This place also looked like a village, almost reminding Roman of Brattle and its quaint cobblestone streets.

“You can set her down now,” he told Coma, who lowered Celia just as Roman returned life to her.

“Good call,” Nadine said as she turned toward the village. “We already look out of place as it is.”

“Where are we?” Celia asked.

“Outer Haven. A village not so far from the Centralia–Eastern Province border,” she explained quickly.

“Are you okay?” Celia asked, her concern shifting to Roman.

“I just need to recharge a bit.”

“We’ll find an inn,” Nadine said.

“Aren’t we too obvious?” Roman asked, casting his arms wide.

“Definitely. I’ll go into town first and get a change of clothing for your dolls. I can say they’re my sisters, that we’re family. Right now, they’re way too obvious,” she said, referring to Coma’s sexy gothic dress and Celia’s tight superhero outfit. “You too, Mr. Terrycloth Shorts.”

“Okay,” Roman said, looking to the left and seeing a cemetery. “I guess we’ll just hang out there…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be long,” Nadine told him.

Roman and his dolls moved toward a corner of the cemetery, Roman glad there wasn’t anyone at the graves.

He crossed his arms over his chest.

“It just looks so bad,” Celia said as she observed the scar running across his back.

“It’s fine.”

“Maybe you could take some of Coma’s dress and make a shirt to cover it.”

“Nadine will come back with clothing. We have to trust her.”

“How many people do you think are buried here?” Celia asked at some point, looking out over the cemetery, which rolled over a couple of hills, the larger gravestones in the far-left quadrant evidence of wealth.

“I really don’t know.”

“Do exemplars and non-exemplars get to be buried in the same cemetery?”

“Yes,” Roman told her.

“Will you be buried with us?” she asked, turning to him suddenly.

“If I’m buried and I have a choice, yes. I don’t know if I will have that choice.”

“I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“He’s just being honest,” Coma said, still on guard, one of her arms now morphed into a blade.

“I know, but it’s just better for me if…” Celia bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“No, you’re fine. You’re perfect,” Roman told her, smiling at the kind doll. Her arms were still covered in blood, the image of violence totally at odds with her caring demeanor.

“So Centralia and the Eastern Province are trying to kill us,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”

Roman had to laugh. “It really is. Especially lately. Believe it or not, there were years and years of my life that went by without anything interesting happening. Then Kevin tried to commit suicide, and now here I am. Well, maybe it would be best to start when…”

“When she fell into a coma?” Celia asked.

“Yes, but even then, there were months and months where not much happened. So it was Kevin’s suicide attempt. That’s what kick-started all this. I guess there’s a little more to it. If Hazrat hadn’t tried to kill me, destroying my cubicle and Kevin’s, I probably wouldn’t have found the lottery ticket. And if I hadn’t found a lottery ticket, I wouldn’t have met Ava, and so on. Although I would probably still be working for Paris, her spy at the immigration office. I don’t know. Who knows?”

“That’s right, who knows?” Celia repeated as the three continued to wait for Nadine to show up with clothing.

It took her about an hour, but she returned with simple dresses for the two dolls and a pair of black slacks and a shirt for Roman.

“What about shoes?” he asked.

“I didn’t think about that. Do you think you can make a pair of sandals? Just temporarily.”

“We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” Roman reminded her.

“I can go back; the cobbler wasn’t very far from the cemetery.”

“It would probably be better,” Roman said.

After getting his size, Nadine returned to the village and came back to the cemetery with a pair of black boots. They were a little tighter than Roman was used to, but he stretched them with his power and they fit comfortably in the end.

“Just let me do the talking,” Nadine said as he led them out of the cemetery.

“I was planning to.”

“And your small doll isn’t activated, is she?”

“No,” Coma answered.

“Good. That would be disastrous.”

Roman fell in line behind Nadine, trying to make everything look as normal as possible. Realizing this likely wasn’t the way to do that, he moved up to her side and loosened up some, trying to fit in.

They reached the inn, passing a few shops out front selling local fruits and vegetables, no one seeming to notice them.

That was one good thing about the East.

Nadine merely nodded at the woman who ran the inn, the heavyset lady stepping aside and letting the four of them pass. They took the stairs up to a large suite on the third floor, Nadine instinctively checking from corner to corner for any type of device.

Roman didn’t know exactly what she was checking for, but he enjoyed the quiet as he lay on the side on the bed trying not to press anything against the injury on his back.

Finally, when Nadine was finished, she joined him, sitting at the end of the mattress. Coma stood by the door, as usual, and Celia had already made herself familiar with the kitchenette, making tea and cutting some of the fruits that had been provided.

“I feel like our plan has failed,” Roman said with a sigh of exasperation.

“It hasn’t.”

“But…”

“Several days ago, back in Centralia, you came to me in my dream telling me they were planning to remove me. We agreed we would discuss these things only in our dreams, and that you would lie to me and say you had been tasked with going after Margo once you got information on what they had done with your power.”

“I’m aware,” Roman told her. “But things are bit hazy. It’s weird. They’ll come back to me when I’m in the dream, but I’ve been purposefully trying not to remember what happened.”

“Because of the telepath.”

“Who is now dead.”

Nadine looked at him funny for a moment. “Was that the woman at the hotel?”

“It was. As much of a man-whore as it makes me, my strategy was to let her use me in any way she wanted so she thought she could trust me and wouldn’t pry too deep. She came to the room right before you arrived. We were in the bathroom together, and after…”

“After you…?”

“After that,” Roman said, “she confessed they had decided to kill me. So that’s new—or was new to me at the time. But she thought they would come later.”

“So that took her by surprise.”

“Exactly. The Type I Class C brought the building down, but not before I moved her to another floor by creating a hole in the ground. I expected her to save us in the end, but I suppose that was actually to our advantage.”

“It was.”

“There’s a piece of this puzzle you don’t know,” Nadine told him suddenly.

“There is?”

“The building we brought down yesterday was not the place where they are making replicants of the tiara I showed you. And it isn’t a tiara at all. It’s this,” she said, tapping her necklace.

“I was wondering why you kept wearing that thing.” It dawned on Roman then what Nadine was hinting at. “So your country is still mass-producing these devices?”

“They are.”

“And then what?”

“The plan is to distribute them to the rebels on the border. The war is still on. Our attack sparked it, as was our plan, but what I didn’t tell you was that we brought down the wrong building. This was on purpose, just in case the telepath actually cracked you. It’s also why I didn’t tell you what the device looked like. Now your country has a tiara they think is able to replicate your powers. Meanwhile, the real device that replicates your power is going to be distributed to rebels, which is why we’re here.”

“No.”

“We did it, Roman, and we’re still doing it. Now we just need to get back to your country and slip away from there. We are close.”

“It just feels surreal,” he admitted to her. “All of this. From what we’ve devised to what’s happened since.”

“Part of it is still what we planned in the beginning. Our countries will go to war against one another over this device. The game has changed some, but we’re much closer to reaching our goal than we were just a few days back. We just have to see this through. We have to make it back over the border, meet with Lisa and Eli, and go from there. Was the telepath any good?”

“Come again?” Roman asked.

“Sex with her. Was it any good?”

“I hate having sex with telepaths. But it got us from point A to point B, and that must count for something. I also appreciate her warning us, even though it was late, and awfully selfish considering she had to get laid first. Plus, she saved us in the end. I don’t know how we would have gotten out of there had it not been for her.”

“I would have saved you,” Coma said, startling the two of them. “It would have been me.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Last Mission

Ava was pouring a glass of wine when she got the message from Rafner to come immediately.

“Why do I have a feeling this is going to be bad?” she asked her fluffy white lapdog, Bonbon, who was currently resting on her couch.

The dog barked once, Ava coming over to her with her glass of wine in hand.

“There’s always time,” she said, looking at the wine and slowly taking a sip from it.

A lot had gone through her mind in the few days since Roman had gone to the east, from how the relationship would be when he came back compared to how it should be, to the best way for her to get away from all this.

She had been at the spa all day yesterday, her thoughts continually coming back to a single idea: maybe it was time to retire.

Ava had been working as an exemplar in service of the government for twenty years, and she had enough connections through her sister to get a very nice diplomatic post if she wanted to go that route.

There was also the idea of simply disappearing, using some of the connections she had in other countries to make sure she was never heard from again.

Ava sighed.

She didn’t know why Rafner had called her to a meeting, but she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it.

Generally, being called after hours meant something was wrong—or even worse, that she would have to act in some way.

After she finished her glass of wine, Ava went to her bedroom, Bonbon following close behind.

She had the urge to lie on her bed for a moment, but she ignored this impulse, moving toward her closet.

As she had done countless times before, Ava changed into her exemplar uniform just in case it was necessary.

“Hello, Plume,” she whispered to herself as she placed her mask on. After looking in the mirror and running her hand through her red hair, she called a teleporter.

Ava was sitting on the couch turning a flame on and off in the palm of her hand when a government-approved teleporter appeared, the woman forming in midair almost like a puzzle being arranged.

Bonbon barked, running toward the woman before Ava called her off.

She joined the teleporter, watching as her hands and arms filtered away piece by piece.

They reappeared in an authorized teleportation zone at the Centralian Intelligence Agency, Ava smiling at the woman.

“You had a cute dog back there,” the teleporter said to her.

“Thanks,” Ava told the woman as she turned to the building, ignoring the younger agents, some of them already recognizing her as Plume.

Stepping into the glass doors, she made her way to the front desk, where the clerk smiled at her and let her know she was expected on the fourth floor, in room 17D.

“I know that room,” Ava said as she turned to the stairs, taking her sweet time.

She got more sidelong glances as she made her way to the room in question, secretly wishing Roman was with her right now so he could see how much people respected her.

The last couple times she’d been there, Ava had been in civilian clothing, or just basic Centralian agent wear. While she knew Roman appreciated her, or at least she assumed he did, she couldn’t help but wonder how he would feel in seeing everyone recognizing her, acknowledging that she was a legend.

Would he treat her any differently? Would there be any jealousy to play with?

Ava offered one agent a smug smile, the young man having no idea what was running through her head, and Ava immediately felt foolish for her brazen display.

Why did she care what Roman thought of her anyway? What was so special about him? Yes, he was handsome and unique, but his personality was toxic, at least in terms of the decisions he made and how those decisions affected the people around him.

Plus, he was a womanizer.

She was pretty sure he was hooking up with Miranda, the fucking know-it-all-telepath, and for all Ava knew he had also hooked up with Nadine, his dolls, and countless others.

Ava shook her head.

This was not the way to go into the meeting she was about to have.

She reached the fourth floor and paused in front of door 17D, letting a deep breath out. She came into the room to find Rafner sitting with Jess, Naomi, and finally Scott, the strongman exemplar in their small group.

“I’m sorry to hear what happened to Team Saint,” Ava said as she took her seat. “I would like to note that I’m the one who said it was a bad idea to send them after Margo.”

“Noted,” Rafner said. “And I agree with you. We can’t keep sending people to be slaughtered by her, wherever she is now.”

“You lost track of Margo?” Ava asked.

“The last place she was seen was at the warehouse.”

“That’s not great.”

“No, it isn’t. But we’ll keep our feelers out, and hopefully she’ll make her presence known somewhere. Once she does, it will be all hands on deck.”

“I look forward to it,” Ava said, not able to hide the hesitation in her voice.

She was going to retire.

That settled it.

She knew what Margo was capable of, having fought alongside her so many years ago during the Western Plague.

While Ava could be bold, and while she had faced many opponents that could have ended her life in a heartbeat, she didn’t have a death wish.

“Actually,” Ava said, “I will not be looking forward to it. I’ve decided to retire.”

“Have you?” Rafner asked.

“Yes.”

“Surely you would like to see through to the completion of your mission before you make such a rash decision.”

“And what mission is that?”

“We can talk retirement later; let us fill you in on what has happened in the East.”

“Okay,” Ava said.

“Jess,” said Rafner.

“Right. As per our orders, we tailed Roman to the Eastern Province. Along the way there, our train was attacked by rebels. We all survived the attack and moved to the capital city of Verne, staying in a district near Eastern University. Roman informed us that Nadine had secured one of the prototypes of the device that can replicate his power. We were able to secure this device, but not before Roman was approved to destroy a university building.”

“He was what?” Ava asked, trying to hide the surprise in her voice.

“The building reportedly contained all the equipment necessary to replicate the device, including an inventory of one thousand tiaras that would grant their wearers Roman’s power. Realizing that this would be an act of war, the embassy and our government agreed to pin it on Roman and have the ambassador say the attack wasn’t approved, that Roman was acting as a rogue agent.”

“You can’t be serious,” Ava said, trying not to gasp.

“Have you not been following any of this?” Rafner asked.

“No. I needed a day, two days, actually. I went to the sauna, met some old friends, you know. We don’t need to discuss my personal life here. I needed a few days off. When I take days off, I try to completely step away from it all. You should know that about me by now.”

“Right,” Rafner said. “Jess, please continue.”

“We sent our forces to try to remove Roman and Nadine, and they failed. The Eastern Province also tried.”

Ava felt her heart beating faster now, her thoughts racing.

She was suddenly glad Miranda wasn’t in the room.

She had to be on guard just in case there was a telepath somewhere in the vicinity, recording the conversation.

“So we’ve gone from trying to make Roman our poster child to wanting to remove him?”

“No one said anything about making Roman our poster child,” Rafner said.

“You literally have him going after his coworkers, and you’ve also tasked him with getting information on two fugitives, on top of discovering what an enemy country has done through dissecting his power. If he had come out of all this, he would have been a poster child.”

“No, he wouldn’t have,” Naomi said. “He would have come out of it with probably another assignment.”

Rafner laughed. “Naomi is right. If Roman had actually done this in the way we wanted him to…”

“I fail to see how Roman hasn’t done it in the way you wanted,” Ava said, putting her foot down. “Especially if we’re the ones that ordered him to bring the building down.”

Rafner cleared his throat in a manner that told Ava he was about to tell her something she was unaware of. “It came to our attention that Roman was also planning something else.”

“It did?”

“Miranda picked up on it.”

“Where is Miranda?”

“She didn’t make it,” Jess said.

Ava feigned a gasp. “How did she die?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Tell me.” Ava narrowed her eyes on Rafner, flames igniting behind her pupils.

“Miranda was having a relationship with Roman in the hopes of getting closer to him for intelligence purposes. She wasn’t able to pick up on exactly what he was doing, but she did note something. Even to the end, she was trying to figure out a way to crack whatever code he and Nadine were using to transmit information. Before the attack by our operatives, Miranda had gone to see Roman. She was supposed to leave. She did not. We believe she died in the rubble.”

“This is so…” Ava bit her lip.

“Yes, it is. Piecing together what details we were able to get from Miranda before her untimely death, we believe that Roman and Nadine were both trying to double-cross their own governments. We do not know how, and now that she is dead, we will not be able to get any more information from that source. So if you need justification in what I’m about to assign you to do next, you can use this: Roman was most certainly planning something treasonous. By removing him and Nadine, we will be one step closer to ridding ourselves of the problems they have caused.”

“And how does the prototype fit into all this?”

“We are still dissecting it,” Rafner said. “For all we know, it may be a decoy. But we don’t think it is. So in a way, what Roman has done by bringing down their production facility is actually a good thing. If we can pin the attack on Roman and Nadine, we will be able to prevent a war from breaking out. So that is your next mission. And if you are planning to retire, let’s call it your last mission.”

“What is?” Ava asked, wishing she had a glass of wine at the moment.

“Your mission is to head to the Eastern Province border. We believe that Roman and Nadine will be coming back here.”

“What makes you believe that?”

“Miranda was able to pick up on some of the images Roman was trying to hide from her. They will definitely be staying in the East. If we can bring them to justice, we can prevent an unnecessary conflict. I see you’ve come dressed for some action. We will be sending troops to the border tomorrow and use train transport rather than mass teleportation to get them there. In the meantime, we already have scouts out monitoring many of the known border crossings. So you may be on call.”

“The border is incredibly long. Do you have any idea where they will try to cross?”

“Our sources are telling us the rebels are planning an attack in the next few days, and we are actively monitoring it. I mentioned troops heading to the border. Why do you think that is? We believe Roman and Nadine might exploit the planned rebel attack and use it as a chance to cross. If not, you can use the distraction as a way to sneak into the country alongside Jess, Naomi, and Scott.”

“Great,” Ava finally said. “Fucking great.”

“It’s not what any of us signed up for, Plume, but hopefully it will all be settled soon,” Rafner said with a tight smile. “And then you’ll be free to spend as much time at the saunas and wine bars as you’d like.”

Chapter Twenty-Five: Staying Alive

Night came, Roman finally able to relax. After what he’d been through, he kept expecting someone to show up, be it his own country or Eastern Province assassins.

But they were safe for now, Roman, Nadine, and his dolls.

If their plan truly did come to fruition in the end, this would be the group he would likely spend the rest of his life with.

And how grand would that be? After everything that had happened to him, to finally be able to settle, to get into a routine.

Perhaps he would find work again, but Roman knew this was the unlikeliest of all scenarios.

Roman had despised work since the day he’d first had to clock in somewhere.

So no, he wouldn’t be working.

Then what?

Would he become an artist of sorts, using his power to make sculptures? Perhaps Roman would be a help to whatever community they ended up settling near, his ability allowing him to do things like quickly remove a tree stump or protect a public structure from natural disasters.

Perhaps.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to make contact with the rebel groups tomorrow,” Nadine said as they sat at the dining room table near the kitchenette.

The table was small, not able to fit more than three people, and it had partially been built into the wall.

While Celia had offered to cook something, it had been just as easy to order food from the kitchen below, the woman who ran the place bringing up a pot of hearty soup, four bowls, and a loaf of bread.

The soup was quite savory, with a layer of oil on top of the hot liquid, chunks of carrots and potatoes giving it texture, and a dollop of sour cream adding flavor.

“How are you going to do that?” Roman asked.

He quickly glanced from Nadine to Celia, who was preparing a pot of tea. As usual, Coma stood near the door, giving her a decent view of the room in case someone showed up unannounced.

“Unfortunately, I’m going to have to ask around a bit. That could bring some suspicion on us.”

“I don’t have to go out,” Roman said.

“That may be suspicious as well. You should go out at least once, but it’s probably best if you stay here. I’m almost out of charge on my wrist guard too,” Nadine said with a nod at the weapon, which was now resting on the nightstand. “I wish it was one of the government-issued ones.”

“The government-issued ones use different packs than the civilian models?”

“Ours are stronger. Stronger than yours too.” Nadine said, eating another spoonful of soup. “I can’t get in contact with Lisa and Eli until we get across the border, but you already knew that.”

“That’s right.”

“It means we may have to stay an extra day in Centralia as we move to their location. Teleportation might be difficult at that point, especially if we are known fugitives. Even the private services will report us.”

“I always wondered if that was true.”

“It is. There’s usually a reward involved. People will do anything for a monetary reward.”

“I’m going to need to dye my hair,” Roman said.

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe we can do that tomorrow as well. What color?”

“Red would be nice,” Celia said from the kitchenette.

“Probably not red. Remember, I’m trying to not bring attention to myself.”

“Black,” Nadine said. “Unless you had another color in mind.”

“Black will do. I have to make sure the eyebrows match as well,” he told her, even though his eyebrows were darker than his hair.

“Naturally.”

“If we do have to stay in Centralia longer than a day, we have to be ready for anything,” Roman said, stating the obvious. “My preference would be to reach the border, meet with Eli and Lisa, and go immediately.”

“Agreed. The fight is far from over, but at least we can get out of it.”

“If you can make contact with the rebel group, what do you plan to tell them?” Roman asked, eating more of his soup.

“I want to find out exactly when the shipment of devices will reach them. Knowing how the rebel groups operate, they’re going to be ready for a fight as soon as it arrives, so we’ll need to get there ahead of them.”

“Or, use their chaos as our cover to make it across the border.”

“Or that.”

“It’s weird that your government both fights the rebels and supplies them with weapons.”

Nadine shrugged. “I feel like most governments in our world like to play both sides.”

“And speaking of the device. Centralian troops are going to be wondering why a bunch of the guys are wearing necklaces with red jewels on them.”

“I’m sure word will get out quickly that the necklaces are giving them their power, not some tiara. But at least we have the element of surprise in that regard.”

Roman couldn’t help but shake his head. “This really is going to be a race to the finish, isn’t it?”

“It really is,” Nadine told him.

After supper, Roman decided to take a shower.

The floor in the bathroom was made of wood, which was the exact same color as the walls.

Roman looked at himself in the mirror longer than he normally would, imagining what he would look like with black hair.

He also turned to the side, checking out the scabbed wound across the top of his back to make sure it wasn’t infected.

“Eli can take care of this,” he said as he stepped into the shower.

It took a moment for the water to get warm, and then it quickly went from warm to piping hot. Roman had to stand at the far end of the shower and step in and out of the water, unable to adjust it to the right temperature.

Eventually, he got used to the heat, his thoughts drifting to his last few moments with Miranda earlier that day.

He never much liked her, but he also hadn’t wanted to see her killed, especially after she had saved him.

In fact, Roman was tired of seeing people close to him die.

That was one thing he wasn’t going to miss when all this was over.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

Roman was startled to hear Nadine’s voice.

He moved the shower curtain aside to see the tall woman standing there, unbuttoning the front of her blouse. Once that was off, she removed her necklace, followed by her bra and panties, the scar on her side visible now.

“Sure,” Roman told her as she made her way to the shower.

It had been a while since the two had been intimate, so Roman didn’t go with his gut, which was telling him to reach forward and pull her into his arms to kiss her.

He let Nadine move to him first, the Eastern Province spy commenting on how hot the water was.

“I know,” Roman said as he switched places with her, the front of his body grazing against her leg.

She threw her head back, completely taking the heat, adjusting to it in an almost unnatural way.

Roman couldn’t help himself.

He brought his hands forward to her waist and from there up to her breasts, Nadine not reacting at all to his advances.

She simply kept her head back, her neck exposed, letting the water run down her hair as Roman touched her.

Eventually she moved closer to him, and Roman took her in his arms and kissed her, their kisses long, passionate, meaningful.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, his honesty evident in the tone of his voice.

Roman loved being with women, and he didn’t know how the dynamics of this would work in the future if they made it out alive, but he had a special place in his heart for the woman he now held in his arms.

They had been through so much together.

And odd as it was, she was a perfect match for him.

“We’re going to get through this,” she assured him, her eyes narrowing on Roman’s face. “Then we are both done.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I can’t either. It’s been a rough day for me.”

“I know.”

“But I had to do it,” she said. “If I didn’t kill him, they would have.”

“Your father?” Roman asked, vaguely recalling her mentioning something about this when they had met in Abby’s dream space.

He still found it hard to keep their dream discussions together, mostly because he had been actively trying to forget them.

“Yes. We discussed it; it was the right thing to do.”

“Do you feel…” Roman shook his head, realizing how stupid the question sounded.

“No, I don’t feel bad about it. My mother recently died. He was no longer happy to be alive. And there’s no telling what they would have done to him. I can’t emphasize that enough. Our governments are different, but both can be incredibly cruel.”

“And both are actively trying to kill us,” Roman reminded her.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t see that coming.”

“I was wondering how long it would be until they turned their sights on me,” he admitted. “For all I know, if I had completed the mission they’d set out for me, they would have just strung me along with the next mission. It would always be that classic scenario, a carrot on the end of a stick.”

“Likely,” Nadine said, kissing Roman again.

She slowly lowered her hand to his member.

Roman glided his hands down her back, cupping her ass.

“We’re almost to the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said, steam billowing off her body now.

“I know,” Roman said softly.

“Maybe it’s best that our countries are trying to kill us now. While it provides additional complications, it also tells me we are on the right path here.”

“You think?”

She nodded. “They’re scared. Your country is trying to pin what you did at their direction on you, and my country is secretly planning to utilize the rebels on the border. There was going to be a war anyway, but it seemed like my country wanted it to be a preemptive strike, and your country made their move before the border war could start. But like I keep saying…” Nadine began to slowly jerk Roman off. “It’s a distraction. And that’s what we’ll need to get away.”

Roman moved his hand down further, pressing his fingers beneath Nadine’s buttocks to reach the lips of her vagina.

“We just have to stay alive,” he said, a bit breathless now.

“We will.”

Paris lay in Margo’s lap, looking up at her as the woman sat with her back to the wall, a portion of her consciousness shifted into its surface so she could see what was happening below.

“Centralian troops are here,” Margo finally said. “There are a lot of them down there, and considering the station is closed for the night, something tells me they’re trying to move in secret.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” Margo said, her consciousness shifting back into her borrowed body. She ran her hand through Paris’s hair.

“You think it’s because of Roman?”

“That’s what my gut is telling me. He was in the East, and they’re all going to the East.”

“How can you be sure?”

“This station only goes to the Eastern Province. If you want to connect somewhere else, you have to walk a few blocks. That’s how I know. It does stop at the border…”

“Should we stay here?”

Margo slowly got to her feet, pacing back and forth for a moment.

“That is the question,” she finally said. “And I really don’t know the answer to it.”

“Perhaps we could see if we can get some information from the soldiers. Maybe one of the boys.”

“I like your style of thinking,” Margo told her doll, “but I don’t believe any of the ones below would have the clearance to get that kind of information. They’re all grunts. I’m going to have to go with my gut,” Margo finally said.

“You mean Catherine’s gut?” Paris asked playfully. She was standing now as well, a mischievous look in her eyes.

“Exactly. Let’s do this. Once the train starts up, we’ll lower onto it.”

“We get to go on a train ride?”

“For now, yes. If we can get some information that tells us otherwise, we’ll make our way back here. But let’s start by lowering ourselves onto the train. I have an idea of what we can do after that.”

“Sounds like fun,” Paris said, clapping her hands together. “Sorry, I’ll be quiet.”

“You’re so cute.” Margo brought the doll in and kissed her. “My favorite creation,” she said once she’d pulled away.

The two waited in the rafters above the Eastern Mane for the soldiers to load onto the train.

It took about thirty minutes, but once final checks were being made, Margo slowly extended their section of the rafter until it was directly above one of the cabins. She lowered herself and Paris down onto the top of the train, both of them getting on their bellies almost immediately.

Margo was aware of what was happening all around her, and she was prepared to do something if they were spotted.

Luckily for whoever may have spotted them, Margo was never seen, and the train started to pick up speed after a few more minutes of finalizing its departure.

By this point, Margo had pressed her consciousness into the roof of their cabin to observe the soldiers seated below.

There were mostly men in this cabin, and once they were away from the station, Paris and Margo moved their way backward, paying close attention to their surroundings as they did so.

They made it to the next cabin and Margo checked again, seeing that this cabin was filled with females. She moved toward one of the bathrooms and crouched above it, waiting for someone to enter.

Eventually, a woman with dark hair stepped into the restroom, sliding the door shut and locking it. As soon as she did, Margo opened up a hole in the ceiling and reached a pair of metal and plastic arms down to cup the woman’s mouth, preventing her from screaming.

The last thing the female soldier would see was a strange white-haired woman crouched above her with a beautiful blond to the right, both of them with soulless eyes.

Margo transferred her consciousness into the woman’s body, Catherine’s going limp.

Paris was there to hold up the other body, waiting for Margo to fully transfer herself before getting the okay to push Catherine’s lifeless body off the side of the train.

The next morning, someone would find Catherine’s dead body along the railroad track, and it would forever scar that person.

But that was no longer Margo’s concern.

She smoothed her hands over her chest, noticing that the woman whose body she had just taken was a little bit heavier than Catherine and definitely not as mousy, with broad shoulders and larger breasts. She briefly glanced at herself in the mirror and saw that the woman had piercing yellow eyes.

Margo made the hole above her wider, wind whipping over it as Paris lowered herself down.

“Now what?” Paris asked.

“We’re going to need another uniform for you,” said Margo.

“It’ll be too obvious if we take someone from this cabin…”

Margo considered her options for a moment.

They could move to the top of the train again and go all the way back to the cargo hold to deposit Paris there. But she selfishly wanted the doll to be by her side.

She recalled seeing most of the service members with bags thrown over their shoulders, spare clothing inside.

“I’ve got an idea.”

Margo stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her, sealing it up so no one else would be able to go in and find Paris.

She made her way through the aisles and sat in the first empty seat.

“That’s not where you were sitting,” another woman said to her.

“Really? Where was I sitting?”

The female soldier nodded two seats up.

Margo switched to the seat and from there took down her bag, or what she assumed was her bag from the cargo hold above the aisle.

No one said anything, which told Margo she had picked the right bag.

She rummaged through it for a moment until she found a set of military fatigues.

Margo returned to the restroom with these and gave the set to Paris. The doll stripped in front of her, Margo suddenly feeling horny.

She started kissing Paris’s neck and massaging her breasts, Paris instinctively placing her hand on Margo’s trousers and pressing her finger against the front of her sex.

Someone knocked on the door just as Paris was about to unbutton Margo’s pants.

“Later,” Margaret told her.

“Later,” Paris agreed. “What about shoes?”

“Shit,” Margo said under her breath as she looked to see that Paris was still wearing a pair of high-heeled boots.

A smile came across her face as she remembered a time when a cobbler in the West was unable to get her shoes to fit right and Margo had to fix them herself.

“I can handle this,” she said.

Even though it was cramped in the restroom, Paris managed to change, Margo focusing on making her shoes look more like combat boots by collapsing the heels and fanning the material out to give Paris a few extra centimeters of height.

To get rid of Paris’s outfit, Margo pressed a hole into the side of the train and tossed the dress out, then sealed it back up as the wind momentarily whipped into the small compartment.

Before stepping back into the main cabin, she used her power to check if anyone was standing on the other side.

The woman from earlier, the one who’d told her she was in the wrong seat, stood with her arms crossed over her chest, tapping her foot.

“She won’t care,” Margo said as she opened the door, smiling at the woman as they stepped out of the bathroom, heading left.

“Hey,” the woman started to say to her.

Margo was ready, her power already latching on to the woman’s heart.

But before doing anything too rash, she turned to see what the woman wanted.

“Yes?” Margo asked her.

“Your boot is untied,” the woman said curtly.

“Is it?” Margo looked down to confirm what the woman had seen. “Thanks.”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Rebel Room Service

“I wonder when she’ll be back,” Casper said as Nadine left.

They had already had breakfast partially prepared by Celia, the rest of the food coming from the inn’s restaurant below. The smell of baked bread still filled their room, even though they were several stories up.

“I don’t know,” Roman told his tiniest doll.

Casper stood on the bed, her hands on her hips as she looked up at him.

“You’re just going to laze around all day?” she asked, showing him her tongue.

“That’s the plan,” Roman said, yawning.

“And why are Celia and Coma dressed like a bunch of farmer’s daughters? I said I wanted all three of us to get new clothing, not just them.”

“Do you want to dress like us?” Celia asked, the redheaded doll tidying up. “I can sew you something if we can pick up some material.”

“Bleh. I’ll pass.”

“Casper, we’ll go out at some point,” Roman told her, “but only briefly. We have to keep a low profile.”

“Fine, fine. How low?”

“Low.”

“Like this low?” she asked, crouching while sticking her ass in the air. “Or lower?”

“Lower.”

She attempted to do this and ended up faceplanting.

Roman rested for a while, occasionally disturbed by the noises Celia made as she cleaned. He was also bothered a few times by Casper, who was trying to get Coma to play around with her.

“Come on, it’s called Who Can Stab Who First? I’ll even give you a ten-second head start!”

“I will crush you,” Coma said repeatedly.

Eventually, Roman figured they would go out to at least get some fresh air and some dark hair dye.

He extended his palm to Casper; the tiny doll crawled up into his hand and went straight to the pocket of his shirt.

“Remember, low profile.”

“Whatever, whatever,” she said, thrusting her hips at Roman. “I’ll behave.”

Once Celia and Coma joined him at the door, Roman locked up and made his way to the first floor.

“Good morning,” the lady that ran the inn called over to him. “There’s tea available if you’re thirsty, dear!”

“Morning. And thanks.”

“It’s nice to see you ladies too,” she told Celia and Coma.

Coma was maskless for the time being, her dark hair in a side ponytail rather than her normal pigtails, which better matched the simple peasant clothing she wore. Celia was similarly dressed, although she’d made some adjustments to her outfit, including adding a shawl she’d found in one of the room’s closets.

“It’s great to see you,” said Celia, “and I promise I’ll return the shawl.”

“Did you find it in the room?” The woman laughed. “That means it isn’t mine to return. If you like it, keep it. Anyway, I won’t talk your ears off over here. Can I help you find something today?”

“Actually, if you can just point me in the direction of either a place to get my hair cut or a general store, that would be great,” said Roman.

The woman told him politely that the town wasn’t large enough to have a salon, but they did have a general store, which was just two blocks down. If he wanted someone to cut his hair, she could arrange for one of her cousins to stop by.

“No, I’ll just visit the store,” Roman said as he stepped out of the inn.

It wasn’t difficult to find the general store.

There were people coming in and out of it with supplies, from food to tools and other construction items such as planks, cans, paintbrushes, and cleaning items.

Roman kept his eyes mostly on his surroundings as he made his way inside.

He couldn’t help but feel like someone was watching him, as if an attack would take him off guard if he wasn’t careful.

“This place is so quaint,” Casper said in a sarcastic voice. “It’s like the world has regressed fifty years. How cool is that?”

“I like it,” Celia told the tiny doll as they moved past a checkout counter to a series of wooden shelves, the entire store looking like it was in low supply.

There was a charm to the village that sort of reminded Roman of some of the outer establishments of Centralia, the ones near the Southern Alliance border where people went to vacation in the woods.

At least they’d used to look like this.

With new condo developments and the need for more housing, many of those green spaces had been turned into mixed living developments, the developers promising to keep a natural appeal to the places but failing to live up to their promises as the suburbs crept in, along with more high-rises as land became scarce.

It took him a few minutes, but eventually Roman located the toiletry section, where he found a single packet of dark hair dye.

“This will have to do,” he said, handing it to Celia, who quickly flipped it over to review the instructions.

“Is there anything else we need?” Coma asked.

“Ahem. Clothing for Casper would be nice,” the tiny doll said.

“You already have clothing that fits you.”

“And why isn’t she wearing a mask?” Casper asked Roman, referring to Coma. “I don’t like her without a mask. Her red eyes bother me. Let’s get her a mask.”

“Quiet,” Roman said under his breath.

“Let’s go back outside. I want to look at trees, and the nature, and the fat birds. There are lots of fat birds out there, I can hear them.”

“Um, sure,” Roman assured her.

They paid for the hair dye and left without any other supplies.

Rather than go straight back to the inn, Roman took a walk around the village, becoming better acquainted with it as Casper commented on just about everything she saw.

The village was about the size of the outdoor shopping center in central Centralia, no larger than two square kilometers, and even that was being generous. There was an embankment above the western side of the village, leading Roman to believe it had mostly been built closer to sea level.

There were a lot of trees though, many with their leaves now missing, a few still puffed up with reds and oranges the likes of which Roman hadn’t seen before in foliage. It wasn’t like this in Centralia where green trees turned brown quickly, their leaves swept away by the wind and straight into gutters or other crevices where they stewed.

As he continued to tune Casper out and moved through the village, Roman wondered where Nadine was, figuring she was likely in one of the homes or establishments.

He didn’t know how she’d convince someone to lead her to the rebels, but he knew she could be quite persuasive.

Even so, it didn’t look like it was going to be an easy task. The place was too quiet, the people keeping to themselves, fixated on their shadows, the sun bearing down on them even though it was cool out.

Back at the inn, Roman followed the directions on the hair dye packet, Celia offering to help him with it.

“This is going to look very strange,” she said once the paste was applied. “You’ll look more like Coma’s brother than Roman Martin.”

“I always wanted a brother,” Coma said.

Casper laughed. “No you don’t; you want a nice younger sister, like me!”

Roman went to the restroom to look at himself in the mirror, seeing she had also made sure to cover his sideburns. She had done an excellent job of spreading the blackened paste through his hair.

Following the directions, and ignoring Casper, Roman waited thirty minutes for the dye to take effect.

Once it was done, he went to the shower to wash it off, Celia volunteering to join him.

The doll got undressed and Roman did the same, their bodies grazing against one another as they moved to the shower.

Roman sat on the edge of the tub as nude Celia washed the dye out of his hair, its dark colors mixing with the water and swirling down the drain.

From there Roman moved to the shower proper where Celia soaped up his back, the doll trying not to get her hair wet.

“It takes so long to dry,” she said as she let him take the brunt of the hot water.

“I get that.”

He ran his hand along the contours of her body, yet again amazed at how real she felt.

He’d done something similar to Nadine the previous night, and there really wasn’t much of a difference.

Celia moved closer to Roman, his eyes naturally falling on her erect nipples. She started to clean off his shaft and he let her, relaxing even more as steam billowed all around them.

Once they were finished, Roman let his hair air dry.

And about an hour later, he went into the restroom and was startled by his own appearance, not recognizing the dark-haired man in the mirror.

He had to laugh.

Roman had been on the verge of attacking himself upon seeing his reflection.

It was several hours later before Nadine returned, the Eastern spy momentarily startled by Roman’s dark hair.

“I thought we were going to dye it together,” she said.

“Celia saved you the trouble,” Roman told her. “Anyway. This is it. Me with black hair.”

“It does go better with your orange eyes…”

Seated on the couch, Roman deactivated Casper before she could make a snarky comment. He placed the tiny doll in his pocket and moved aside a bit to give Nadine room to sit.

“Well?” he asked her.

“I tried some of my normal tactics; no one was receptive.”

“What are your normal tactics, if I may ask?”

“If I told you…” Nadine shrugged, crinkling her nose a bit. “I guess it really doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s mostly a style of talking to people—no matter what country they live in or who they are—in a way that makes them feel like they’re being listened to. We were taught to show kinship with the goal of getting more information from people without coming off as if we’re prying.”

“How does it work?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than this, but I can give you somewhat of an example. Let’s pretend you’re a clerk at the general store.”

“Okay.”

Nadine cleared her throat. “I was looking for the hair dye. Do you happen to know where it is?”

“Um, aisle four,” Roman said.

“It sounds like you’re busy.”

“No, I’m not busy. Just putting up our new shipment,” Roman said, falling into a role he had learned at the bodega he’d worked at when his powers had been stripped away from him.

“Putting up a new shipment?”

“Yeah, it just came in.”

“It seems like there’s a lot coming in these days.”

“We’ve been selling more supplies than we normally would, mostly because…”

A grin stretched across Roman’s face.

“See?”

“And perhaps that would have been the moment I told you about more people in town because of the rebels, or just said something about more people being around, elaborating further.”

Nadine confirmed this with a nod. “And from the information you have given me, I would then continue my journey into finding the person I’m looking for. But, unfortunately, the people of Outer Haven have either been trained against our intelligence-gathering methods or they simply aren’t buying them. Anyway, it was a day of a lot of mirroring and running around in circles.”

“Would you like something to eat?” Celia asked. “I can go downstairs and request that dinner be brought up.”

“That would be very nice, thank you,” she told the redheaded doll.

“Thanks,” Roman called out to Celia once she reached the door of their room.

“She really is sweet,” Nadine said after the doll had left.

“She is.”

“And I can see the usefulness in having her around.”

“I’m glad. Because I’m not planning to get rid of any of them, including this one,” Roman said as he patted his hand on his front shirt pocket.

“My least favorite, but I suppose she can be helpful as well.”

“Sometimes. So what then? What’s next?”

“You mean, if I can’t find anything about the rebels?”

Roman nodded.

“If that’s the case, we may just have to go to the border on our own and risk a crossing. I know some places it would be easier, which is why I chose Outer Haven in the first place.”

“We could just go underground,” Roman suggested. “If we started far enough away from the border, I could make a tunnel connecting to the other side. I don’t know exactly where we would come out, but we could deal with that when we arrive.”

“That’s not a bad idea. And I’m sure I can think of a few others as well. Either way, we will get there, we’ll meet with Eli and Lisa, and then we’ll move to our final destination.”

Roman and Nadine locked hands, Nadine turning to him.

“I can’t wait,” Roman told her earnestly.

They ate another hearty stew, Celia sitting and chatting with them about their plans for after they lived through all of this, both of them vague mostly because they didn’t know.

The main focus was making it to the other side; what happened after would be handled then.

It turned out to be a pretty nice evening, Coma taking a seat and relaxing some even though she couldn’t really enjoy food or beverages.

Nadine called down for a local apple wine, which tasted more like cider to Roman than wine.

Now experiencing a slight buzz, Roman was the first to lie down on the bed, his hands behind his head as he started to drift off.

The next thing he knew, Nadine was whispering his name, Roman blinking his eyes open and sitting up to see several men standing in the room, all with black masks on their faces.

“Not another move,” the largest of the men said, pointing his wrist guard at Coma.

Roman pressed his tongue against the inside of his lip as he sat up.

His combat doll was within striking distance of the masked man and would easily be able to engage him.

“You haven’t really thought this through, have you?” Roman asked as he started to reach out, grabbing hold of all four of their hearts.

“We were told someone was asking about us, and we are responding,” the largest of the men said.

Roman assumed they were rebels, all the men wearing dark fatigues. And from what bits of their faces he could see through their masks, the men were unshaven, wild looks in their eyes.

“Nadine?”

“Go on,” she told Roman.

“I’m going to make this very simple for the four of you. Right now, I have control of all of your hearts. If you don’t think this is the case, try me,” Roman said, his voice dropping into a growl. “Lower your wrist guards and take them off. Hand them to her. Then we will talk.”

“Why would we do something stupid like that?” one of the other men asked, stammering. “Y-you’re not telling us what to do!”

“I don’t want to kill any of you, nor do I want to break your equipment, because you may need it in the future. But this is your last warning. All of you will be dead in an instant, and then I will animate your bodies and have each of you jump out the window and dig your own graves. Maybe I’ll have you skull fuck one another too.”

“You don’t have that kind of power…” the first man said, but the tone of his voice told Roman he was aware this type of ability existed, much more aware than the other three men behind him, who were still pointing their weapons at Celia, Coma, and Nadine, each of them showing various signs of apprehension, from the occasional shake to the man whose eyes were wide with terror.

Coma’s arm morphed into a blade. “Enough,” she started to say, Roman’s combat doll interrupted by Celia, who stepped up to the rebel aiming his wrist guard at her.

“This is unnecessary,” Celia said firmly. “We were looking for you so we could join you in crossing the border. It’s as simple as that. We know more or less of what you’re up to, and none of us are really affiliated with any government organization now.”

“Come again?” their leader asked, eyeing the beautiful redhead curiously.

“Both of our governments—the Eastern Province for her, and Centralia for the three of us—are actively trying to hunt us down,” Roman explained. “So, we have no real alliances any longer. We just want to get across the border.”

“What if we have an alliance with our own government?” one of the masked men asked. He was a tall fellow with broad shoulders, a nasty look about him even if he seemed a bit apprehensive. “Turning you over to them could be an advantage for us…”

The man’s wrist guard snapped off his arm, formed legs, and scurried across the floor as his clothes began to tighten.

The man fell to the floor, attempting to tear his clothes off before they could suffocate him.

“Stop!” their leader said, hesitation in his voice. “We get it. I get it. You have the power, don’t you?”

“I do,” Roman said. The animated wrist guard stopped in front of him, its top end lifting like the tail of a scorpion as it paused before his feet.

Their leader lowered his wrist guard, the other two doing the same.

“Glad we can come to an understanding,” Roman said, letting up on the man who was being suffocated by his own clothing.

The rebel stood and angled his shoulder away from Roman, embarrassed.

Silence stretched across the room, Roman still ready for anything but slowly relaxing his grip on the men’s hearts.

Finally, their leader spoke. “I believe Marcus will need to speak to the four of you.”

Roman could tell that at least one of the rebels was unsure of this development and wanted to protest.

But the rebel in charge pressed on.

“Our teleporter will be here soon. Please pack any belongings you would like to bring.”

“We don’t have much,” Nadine said, satisfied with how that had turned out. “I’m glad you saw things our way. While I don’t like to threaten people, nor does Roman, it would have been a very bad choice on your part to engage us.”

“Maybe,” the man said under his breath.

“But might I make a suggestion?” she continued. “Next time, how about knocking instead?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Exemplars and Wrist Guards

A teleporter took Nadine, Roman, and Roman’s dolls to a location deep within the woods. The canopy shrouded just how large the encampment was, the moonlight barely able to get in.

There were lights strung from the canopies of the trees, giving an orange glow to a number of white tents, some with the square footage of a two-bedroom condo.

Roman saw rebels milling about, male and female, some as if they were on duty and others more relaxed. The rebels all wore dark fatigues similar to the four men who had appeared in the hotel room, their rankings indistinguishable.

They were led to one of the larger tents in the center, where one of the rebels went inside and spoke before returning, telling them it was fine to go in.

Roman entered the tent with Nadine and his dolls to find a man sitting at a table, a map of the border laid out before him. The rebel leader had broad shoulders and a sharp beard twisted off into a knot. There was a hint of youthfulness to him, overshadowed by a dire look in his eyes, eyes that told Roman he’d been through quite a bit.

Please, have a seat, the man’s voice echoed in Roman and Nadine’s heads.

“Telepath,” Roman told Coma, who took a position near the door, Celia joining her.

If you don’t mind, I will speak to you mentally, the man thought to them. You may respond to me verbally, if you’d like.

“I suppose we should cut right to the chase,” Nadine said, now seated to Roman’s left. “As long as that’s all right with you.”

Rather than say anything himself, Roman figured he’d let Nadine do the talking.

I suppose we should, the rebel leader thought to them. My name is Marcus Ruffin, and you may call me Marcus.

“Great,” Nadine said, pursing her lips for a moment as she took him in. “I am Nadine, and this is Roman. Behind us are Coma and Celia.”

It’s nice to meet you all. You were seeking our attention, and now you have it. What is the purpose of this visit? While I can simply check, I figured I’d ask first. I don’t mean to make haste of any potential conversation, but the next thirty-six hours are crucial to our cause.

“That’s partially what this is about,” Nadine told him. “We need to cross the border. If you haven’t already figured it out, I am an Eastern Province operative, and I have worked on the Centralian side for our country with the goal of eroding their border security and expanding their vulnerabilities, among other things.”

Thank you for your service.

“Full disclosure, I have also had to battle against rebel groups, most recently in a train attack. So we are not here to join you.”

Marcus drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. You are referring to the recent attack on the train coming from Eastern Mane?

“Yes,” Nadine said.

That was part of a larger strategy, the rebel leader thought to them. But we don’t need to go into that now. What is it you are seeking from us?

“We want to move with you when you make your inevitable attack on the border,” Nadine said. “We would fight as much as we need to until we reach the crossing, and then we would leave you and your forces to it.”

And how do you know we are planning an attack? the man thought, narrowing his eyes on Nadine.

“I’ve already read the briefings, and you damn well know that because you can see inside my head. So let’s cut the shit. You should be getting a shipment of devices that allow you to animate inanimate objects. You may have already received this shipment.”

Disregard any prying I’ve already done and continue.

“Our government used his power to create these devices,” Nadine said, nodding toward Roman. “We are well aware of what they can do, and we also aided you in a way that may reduce casualties in your upcoming attack.”

How’s that? Marcus thought back to her.

Roman noted that the man still hadn’t confirmed if they had received any devices or not, the telepath still in the information-gathering stage.

“We provided a decoy device to his contacts in the Centralian Intelligence Agency. The Centralians have been told that the device will be on the rebel’s heads, a tiara of sorts. It would be best for you to have some of these either delivered manufactured here at the camp before your attack. But that’s just a suggestion.”

And leave our troops open to immediate headshots?

“Perhaps. I don’t think it will be long before they figure out it isn’t the headpieces that are allowing your men and women to control the environment. But, it does give you an advantage.”

I don’t quite see it like that, but I can understand how our government would consider rebel lives disposable.

“Yet you continue to take aid from our government,” Nadine said, her tone sharpening. “If you truly were rebels, you would be entirely dependent upon your own cunning to feed yourselves, outfit your soldiers, and purchase military-grade weapons. So there’s no need for you to act like you are anything different from me or what I once was. We are both cogs.”

Marcus took a deep breath in, his tongue pressing against the inside of his lips. Finally, his voice appeared in their heads again. While I don’t agree with how you’ve phrased your last statement, I do understand where you are arguing from, especially with the role you have taken on as an operative.

“So you will allow us to join you then?” she asked. “It would only be temporary.”

I believe I have no choice, Marcus thought back. And I appreciate your desire to get away from all this. You have let me take a look into your mind, Nadine, without protest. I understand your passion, and while you’re right that I have a role to play—we all do—I recognize that yours could finally be over. Perhaps there is a part of me that wishes it was my day to relinquish the role handed to me.

Marcus reached into his desk and brought out a small metal case. He opened it, showing them a necklace similar to the one Nadine wore, the chain thinner than hers.

We will make our attack a day from now, in the early morning, using the cover of darkness. The devices have already arrived. And since you’re here, Marcus thought, turning to Roman, I would like you to show me more about your powers and capabilities. I will be the one responsible for training the men who receive these devices. Unfortunately, I have a single day to do so. I wish I had a say in the matter, but those around me—and by that, I mean our government officials—are calling for a border attack to respond to what recently happened at Eastern University.

“So you want me to show you how the power works?” Roman asked.

Precisely. I want you to show me what you can do with it, and its limitations. I played around with the device some. It is quite intuitive, but it will also be dangerous for my troops if they aren’t trained properly. With five hundred men wielding this power, I will be able to use my telepathic ability to instill in them what I have learned from you, including limitations I have devised on my own. Most of this group will move ahead of the rest, which would be the perfect time for the two of you—I mean four—to make your exit.

“So you’ll send the majority at the start and then save some for the rear?” Nadine asked.

Yes, I think the initial attack will benefit from this power, but there will be a point when the fight will move mostly to exemplars and wrist guards. My plan then would be to have a rear unit that can come in and level the playing field, even if it means added casualties on our side. Personally, I would hope for no casualties, but I’m aware that isn’t a possibility.

“What is your actual goal?” Roman asked, not quite understanding the telepath’s strategy. “Is it to just temporarily open the border? Or…?”

It is to poke holes in the border, holes that cannot be easily covered. This particular camp has eight thousand rebels, and there are two others near here, each with half that amount. Marcus tapped on the map in front of them. We are the first wave; then the other two forces will swoop in. The Centralians will respond in force, and once they do, Eastern Province troops will attack along the outer rims of the borders.

“It just seems like…” Roman shook his head.

You’re right. We are disposable and are being used as such. It is not something I’m in favor of, but there will be changes in the government once this attack takes place, and we will be recognized as heroes. Those like me, if they make it out alive, will be offered new roles in this government. And that’s when we will have the chance to make reforms that benefit the people. While it seems we are kowtowing to the Eastern Province government, we are not. We will use these events as a way to bring our causes to the mainstream, to win over the minds of the people. Then we’ll institute radical change.

“Yeah,” Roman finally said. “I’m not going to comment on that. You can read my thoughts, though.”

I understand your hesitation, Marcus thought to him. And perhaps you’re right to be skeptical of our greater plan. But what choice do we have? There have been rebel forces in the Eastern Province for millennia, never able to accomplish anything. This is our chance. And we have to take it.

“I can respect that,” Roman finally said. “I’ve been there before.”

Roman, Nadine, and the dolls were eventually led to a smaller tent, one generally reserved for three people. The structure was made of canvas, and while it was a little tight inside, there was room to stand and it felt homey enough.

“I’ll stand out front,” Coma said, stepping out of the space before Roman could stop her.

“I can just sit over here,” said Celia as she sat near the entrance, her legs crossed beneath her.

There were two beds, the space lit by a lantern. Roman sat down on one of the beds, noticing how hard it was. He ran a hand through his black hair and shook his head as Nadine sat across from him, a tired look on her face.

“It’s going to be a disaster,” Roman whispered.

“I know.”

Roman had just spent an hour going over some of the things he could do with his power while Marcus tried not to show how overwhelmed he was by Roman’s capabilities or the apprehension he was clearly facing at leading a squad of rebels that could animate inanimate objects.

He could see it now, the mistakes that were going to be made, the people who would die because of these mistakes. And if other people got hold of the devices, it would make the battle even more unpredictable, which meant one thing and one thing only.

“We need to get out ahead of it,” Nadine said.

“We really do. We’ll move there with them, but then I’ll use my power to send us far to the side of the conflict, away from any of the immediate action. We can still always try the tunnel method.”

“We may have to. The thing I don’t like about that is it will be clearly discoverable by a flying exemplar on patrol, and it’s not like we’re going to be able to meet with a teleporter on the other side, because that will be picked up as well. No, we move through the confusion, then disappear as best we can.”

“It seems risky, but I suppose that strategy has worked before, running right up the middle rather than trying to flit along the sides.”

“Is that supposed to be sexual innuendo?”

Roman smirked. “Not unless you want it to be.”

“It’s strange, you know.”

“What is?”

“All of this. To make it this far, and to be so close to reaching the other side. I can’t help but wonder how things would have turned out if our governments hadn’t attacked us. We would have caught our train back to Centralia, met with Eli and Lisa, and gotten out of this before war broke out. We wouldn’t be here now.”

“Yeah,” Roman said, “we wouldn’t. Can’t argue there. I’m trying not to think about what we’ll do when we get back to where we’re going. I’m only trying to think about getting there.”

“We’ll start a farm,” Nadine said as she removed the shawl Marcus had given her.

“You’re making a lot of jokes tonight,” Roman commented.

“I’m just exasperated by all this. I’m at the point where I sort of have this feeling we’re going to make it through and accomplish our objective, but it also seems so far away. And weirdly enough, at that point, everything becomes just a little bit humorous. All of this.”

“The impending war?”

“That, among other things. Our countries, their boundaries, exemplars, non-exemplars, the way our paths have crossed and continue to cross. You know, it could have ended several times, but either both of us are incredibly stubborn or we’re destined to live, and eventually…”

“Yeah,” Roman said before she could finish.

“Eventually die together…” she said softly.

“Or we could just live forever in one of Abby’s dream worlds.”

Nadine snorted. “Spare me. All I would be able to think about is that I’m artificially alive and my date of death is tied to whenever Abby eventually passes. As nice as it would be to live like that, I’ll pass. I’d rather go out quickly. A blast to the center of the forehead,” she said, tapping on her skull, “or perhaps another quick way to die. Your power is capable of killing people quickly.”

“It’s your power too now,” Roman said, nodding at her necklace.

“But I’ll never be able to wield it like you.”

“And I’m an amateur,” Roman reminded her. “Margo. If anyone is a master at this power, it’s my half-sister.” He shook his head. “It still feels weird saying that.”

“It does make sense that you two are related, considering your powers,” said Nadine. “And you think you’ll be able to give up your pursuit of her if we make it through this?”

“I’ll have to,” Roman admitted. “If we make it out of this alive, trying to bring her back into it will just spark everything up again. I know you’ve been at this for well over a decade now…”

“Closer to two,” Nadine said.

“Exactly. But I can tell you I’m done with this kind of lifestyle. As interesting as it is, it’s just too much.”

“It really is. I know other operatives who get addicted to it, and I myself have been addicted before. But in the end, you just realize you’re spending your life working at the discretion of some unknown bureaucratic entity who cares more about the task than the extremes a person has to go through to accomplish it.”

“We should get some rest,” Roman said with a yawn. “I don’t know how much resting I’ll be able to get on the stiff bed, but I’m going to try.”

“It’s not that bad…” Nadine looked to where Celia was standing and saw there was a container of water. “I’m going to wash my face and then join you.”

“No dreams tonight,” Roman told her.

“Agreed. If I see Abby, I’ll tell her to bother someone else.”

Roman laughed. “That’s one way to spawn a nightmare.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Call

Ava finished her glass of wine, yet again feeling the urge to just disappear, to retire from all of this.

And maybe if she had done so an hour ago, she really could have gotten away with it.

Ava had connections around the world.

She didn’t think it would be that hard for her to disappear, to go off the grid, to never be heard from again.

What was one famous exemplar disappearing entirely? Her government would cover it up anyway, and while there would be search parties, they wouldn’t find her in the end.

Not where she was planning to go.

Like for most people wanting to get away from it all, there was always the Northern Alliance, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, a hot country with tropical jungles and boiling volcanoes, pristine lakes and, most importantly, secluded villages.

Ava had visited before.

It was quaint, many of the homes pressed together within the little villages.

Most of the communities were bike-friendly, the wine was excellent, and the food was doable.

Perhaps she could have a garden…

A series of bright lights played out in her living room, startling Bonbon and shattering Ava’s reverie.

A teleporter took shape, the man wearing a Centralian military uniform.

“Hello,” he started to say.

“I’m not finished with my wine yet,” Ava told him, showing him the empty glass.

He raised an eyebrow; she proceeded to fill the glass from the bottle of wine she had sitting on her glass table.

“Please, take a seat,” she told the teleporter as she strutted past him and Bonbon excitedly jumped on the couch, her tail beating against the cushion as the man sat.

Ava took the glass of wine into her bedroom, shutting the door.

She then proceeded to sit on the single sofa chair in the room, moving into a relaxed position, her legs crossed and hanging over the armrest as she sipped from her glass of wine.

Ava took her sweet time, enjoying her beverage.

And once again, she considered leaving, ordering another teleporter to appear in her bedroom and take her away from what she knew was going to be a brutal conflict.

But her mission didn’t stop there.

Upon pressing the Eastern Province rebels back, she was to infiltrate the country alongside a few other exemplars and locate Roman and Nadine.

She had a feeling he would be at the fight, and she didn’t know exactly why aside from the fact that it made sense, that he would be smart enough to use a distraction to take advantage of the opening in the border wall.

Strangely enough, she was under the impression that Roman had the same plan as her, to get to the North.

And that was only accessible through either the Western Province or Centralia.

He could always take an intercountry teleporter, but those had to be government-sanctioned and were heavily monitored, and with the Eastern Province government also trying to locate Nadine, it wasn’t going to be a possibility.

No, if he was making his move soon, it would be through a border crossing.

Ava finished her glass of wine, wishing she had brought the rest of the bottle into her bedroom.

She begrudgingly dressed, placing her dark mask with green highlights over her face, the curvy exemplar observing herself in the full-length mirror.

She patted her stomach, wondering if she had gained a pound.

Twisting to the side, Ava arched her back a little to observe her body, the tightness of her ass. Perhaps she would have a different body had she had children.

But no, the mission was her child.

The government her spouse.

After tapping herself twice on the ass, Ava exited her bedroom and made her way to the front door, where she slipped into the boots that matched her uniform, all of it inflammable and able to reform if she morphed into her total inferno mode.

“Ready?” the teleporter asked, trying to hide the annoyance in his voice and failing.

“Not quite,” Ava said as she bid farewell to her dog.

She had a friend that was supposed to come in the morning to take care of Bonbon, Ava giving the cute white pup a hug before setting her down.

“Now I’m ready.”

Ava and the teleporter appeared at the border in an authorized teleportation zone for members of the Centralian Intelligence Agency.

She saw that a tent had been erected and noticed a few familiar faces.

As she made her way over to it, passing a crate of wrist guards, a Centralian soldier with dark hair smiled at her. Joining her was a blond female Ava could have sworn she’d seen before.

“Plume?” the woman with dark hair said, something flashing behind her blazing yellow eyes.

“Yes?”

“I’m… I’m a big fan.”

“Me too!” the second woman said, licking the front of her teeth.

“Good to know,” said Ava, trying to smile. “Would you like an autograph or something?”

“No,” the first female soldier said, tilting her head to the right a bit as she took Ava in. “Just meeting you is good enough for me.”

“Right, well, nice to meet you both,” Ava said as she made her way under the tent to find Jess, Rafner, Naomi, and other agents seated at a round table.

Once she sat, the environment around her started to change until they were in another space entirely, an enclosed room without windows, the walls blank.

“It’s better for us to speak here. It’s more secure,” Rafner said, smiling at Ava. “Is everything okay?”

Ava blinked twice, reminding herself to act sober. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re a bit late. You’re usually on time.”

“I got caught up with something.”

“Okay,” Rafner said, a stern look coming across his face as he turned his attention back to the people seated around him. “To continue, we believe the rebels will be making their attack in the next twenty-four hours. Likely at night. We have captured and interrogated several of their members and sent them back to the ranks with their minds wiped. Once they arrive…”

Ava tuned him out as he went over the plans for their non-exemplar troops, a Centralian military general taking over at some point and going into further detail.

They then moved to another general, one in charge of exemplar forces who had his assistant, a woman with short purple hair, use her power to create a three-dimensional image of what they planned to do and how they planned to execute it.

This interested Ava, only in the fact that she found the woman’s bizarre, almost useless power fascinating to observe.

She got this from her sister, who taught her that while all powers weren’t equal, many were equally useful.

“Is there any intelligence on the whereabouts of Roman and Nadine?” Ava asked once there was a pause in the conversation.

“No. They ported away from Verne using multiple teleporters, but there is a chance they will be at the battle set for tomorrow. I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“I’ve had the same feeling,” she said.

“And if they are seen, streamlined removal is crucial. Especially with Roman Martin. His powers, for those of you that may not have read the briefings, are how the Eastern Province has been able to develop the tiaras that allow them to animate inanimate objects. He will be stronger than any of the soldiers wearing these devices.”

“Rebels,” the military general seated next to Rafner corrected him.

“Correct, rebels.”

“We are going to fight a bunch of rebels who are wearing tiaras like princesses?” Jess asked. “If that’s already been covered, I’m sorry for bringing it up again.”

“I don’t think they’ll look like the device that was presented to us,” Rafner said, not at all bothered by her question. “I believe it will be smaller, more streamlined. If they are wearing helmets of sorts, which they should be, the devices may also be hidden beneath. From what we have seen of the rebel groups, they have a…” He briefly considered how he should phrase this. “A very loose concept of uniform. Most wear black, but there is nothing too standard, and that’s why I mention some will be outfitted correctly while others will not.”

“But they should still be taken seriously,” Ava reminded everyone at the table. “While they will not be as powerful as Roman, they do have devices that allow them to replicate his unique abilities. Coming from someone who has seen his power in action, this is troubling indeed.”

Both Jess and Naomi nodded in agreement.

“And the ones that have helmets will likely have other technology built in that prevents telepathy,” one of the female generals added. “So our best bet will be to hit them from the sky with exemplars who can already fly, and hit them quickly. Our strongmen can make the first ground-based attack, as that has worked in the past when it comes to border conflicts. The non-exemplar troops should allow the exemplar forces to thin the herd a bit while continuing to prepare their wrist guards and other weapons for the inevitable charge.”

“It’s not going to be a fair fight,” Rafner reminded everyone, “even if the rebel groups are partially funded by the government here. So our goal is to make it swift. As many casualties on their side as possible. To quell any hope they have of breaching the wall or defeating our forces. If we do this right, it will be the only conflict. We will let the diplomatic branch of our government take over from that point, once the Eastern Province has been reminded what we are capable of. What I’m trying to say here is to continue to not only think of this as a fight for our own country, but a fight to prevent a prolonged war. Eastern Province casualties are our second goal after preventing a single rebel from crossing the border.”

Ava nodded. She could already smell the burning bodies, hear the screams of the people she would inevitably torch.

She wished in that moment that she had another glass of wine so she could swallow their terrible cries down and erase the images that would come next, the blackened soil, the people reaching up for her, flames licking off bodies, the heat of the fire, the pain-stricken terror playing out across her eyes as the raging plumes consumed them.

As Ava did her job.

And hopefully, this was the last time.

Hopefully, this was her last mission.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Snowball’s Chance

Roman awoke to find Nadine sobbing.

She was lying with her back to him, curled into a small ball.

He placed his arm around her, bringing her in closer, burying his head in her hair and inhaling a hint of sweet peppermint.

Roman knew what she was upset about and didn’t say anything, didn’t offer any words of encouragement or sympathy.

He merely remained present.

Roman had been in similar situations, not full-on sobbing but up in the middle of the night wondering about how his life had turned out, especially after his wife had fallen into a coma.

There were even times when he’d looked to the women he’d slept around with for general comfort, never telling them what was really happening, of course, Roman feeling too guilty about it to really put words to what he was experiencing.

But their embrace, especially the ones who’d actually liked him, had helped him through a rough time.

He would do the same for Nadine, if necessary.

Roman had a feeling he would never see his parents again, which saddened him, but he also knew it was to their benefit.

Still, he couldn’t imagine having to kill them to protect them from his own government.

While his parents might be monitored for a spell, Roman was nearly certain the Centralian government wouldn’t try to execute them.

After all, what would be the point?

And they weren’t even his real parents.

The Centralian government would likely be frank with his mother and father, telling them Roman was a wanted fugitive and to reach out to them if he ever made contact.

And knowing his parents, they would.

They weren’t the type to disobey their government, both patriotic to some degree, as were many Centralians who had passed the age of fifty.

No, they wouldn’t be executed. Roman appreciated but couldn’t fully understand what Nadine was going through.

So he just held her.

And eventually, he fell back asleep, waking up in the morning as light shone into their tent.

Nadine was already up, seated on a crate and sipping from a cup of tea.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded as if nothing had happened.

Celia came into the tent with two fresh loaves of bread, their smell reaching Roman’s nostrils.

“They had meat, but it was all out when I made it to the front of the line,” she said with a frown. “Some of these rebels are…”

“Animals?” Coma asked, Roman’s combat doll still standing at the entrance.

“Yes. A little.”

“Let them be animals,” said Nadine with a wave. “A good majority will be dead by this time tomorrow. Let them enjoy their last day alive.”

“You think that many will die?” Roman asked her.

“They aren’t trained, and as you mentioned last night, they barely know how to use the device. It’s going to be a disaster. They’re going against your country’s military, and I’m sure there will be exemplars there as well. It’ll be a bloodbath.”

Roman considered this as the day progressed and he was once again asked by Marcus to show the rebel leader how to use his power.

He instructed the man to the best of his ability, some of Marcus’s best rebels watching, gasping every now and then when Roman did something incredible.

He showed them how he could use his ability to manipulate organic things, from rocks to trees, and how he could manage substances such as water and fire.

Roman also showed them how to give an item life by animating a loaf of bread.

He never told him that the two dolls standing near his demonstration, or the deactivated mouthy one quietly tucked in his pocket, were also powered by his ability.

As far as the rebels knew, Coma and Celia were alive, Roman lucky enough to be traveling with three beautiful women.

Nadine wasn’t at his demonstration.

She was meeting with some of the other rebel leaders, discussing information she had gleaned during her time as an agent.

Roman wished he could have been at that meeting, imagining the shocked looks on their faces as she told them some of the things she had been asked to do by her own government.

But his current role was equally as important, Roman hoping to give the rebels a fighting chance.

A chance he also knew was incredibly thin.

As the day progressed, he had some of them practice raising pillars from the ground, a strategy he’d found useful.

For the ones who seemed to understand the power a little better, he had them doing more complicated things, like trying to form spheres of fire, while he gave them strategies for taking control of their environment.

It felt good to be able to share his knowledge, as Roman had always taken the role of a student when it came to studying his power, never the role of a teacher.

And this inspired him to work even harder at educating them in the small amount of time that he had.

Since there were five hundred rebels with the devices, he had Marcus pick his twenty best men, those that would lead the smaller squads.

Roman gave them pointers and ran them through more drills, with the goal of those twenty passing this knowledge along.

They were doing their drills in a glade of sorts, which Roman had made wider by pressing some of the trees back. It was about half a kilometer away from the rest of the camp, the abilities being practiced not quite secret considering the amount of noise they created.

As his group of twenty trained their individual squads, Roman moved in and out of the ranks giving pointers, Coma doing the same.

At first, the soldiers wondered why the combat doll was giving instructions, but then they saw that she could use Roman’s powers once she morphed her arms into blades and took control of an overturned rock.

So they took her advice to heart as well.

And so it continued until the sun started to set, casting blush-colored hues through the leaves still left on the trees, Marcus informing the rebels that they had five or six hours to rest before the journey to the border began.

I can’t thank you enough, Marcus thought to Roman, the bearded man beaming a smile of true appreciation to him. What you have done will help us in so many ways.

“It was my pleasure.”

You are certain that many will die later tonight, are you? Marcus thought to him after a long pause in which he took a quick look inside Roman’s mind.

Roman nodded as the black-clad rebels continued to jog back toward the main encampment.

Coma was to his left, a half-smile on her face.

Celia was there as well, telling Coma how great of a job she’d done instructing the troops.

I suppose it is good to be skeptical.

“I just hope you’re ready for mass casualties,” Roman told him in all seriousness. “You mentioned you had a plan to eventually move up in the government; I take this to mean you won’t be fighting along the front lines.”

No, but not because I don’t want to, because I’m not allowed to. I’ve already been told by those above me that I am supposed to stay back, that there are plans to make me the face of this once it is over.

“So you’re going to become a politician?”

As much as it pains me to say that, yes, Marcus thought to him as they began walking back to the encampment, Roman returning the trees to their normal positions. Does that bother you?

“It’s just…” Roman didn’t quite know how to phrase it. “Predictable? No, that’s not it. Sad? I guess that word oversimplifies it. I don’t know. To know that this whole charade is just a way for more rebel leadership to move into the government, that the government is behind this, and that the same government wants to start a war with my country for the sole purpose of changing its leadership structure is…”

Unsettling?

“Maybe that’s the right word.”

Once Roman was back, he went to his tent to find Nadine waiting there, the former Eastern spy letting him know she had arranged for food to be delivered.

“How was the training?”

“Better than I thought it would be. But…” Roman shook his head. “So many of those men and women are going to be slaughtered.”

“Yes, yes they are.”

“And we have to get ahead of that mess,” he said. “My government isn’t going to let a bunch of rebels come across the border. If there aren’t already exemplars there, they’ll be teleporting to the fight in a matter of minutes once it’s started. Your country doesn’t have a device that gives someone superspeed, do they?”

She chuckled. “Like a pair of shoes?”

“With wings on them, yes.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“So is giving five hundred rebels a device that allows them to animate inanimate objects. But that’s just me. Maybe I’m crazy.”

“You definitely are crazy,” Nadine said as a woman entered their tent, a metal tray in her hands. Sitting on the tray was yet another loaf of bread and two bowls of stew.

“I’m sorry,” the attendant said, looking at Coma and Celia. “I will bring your stew as well.”

“We’re not hungry,” Celia told the woman. “But if you could bring them some tea, that would be great. The freshest tea you have.”

“Right away,” the woman said, leaving. Roman and Nadine took their places on the hardened soil, their bowls of stew on the crate between them, Roman already tearing into the bread.

“We get out ahead of it, and we use the cover of night to make our way across,” Nadine reminded him. “We don’t stop to fight; we only move forward.”

“Move forward,” Roman said, nodding in agreement.

“Yes, move forward.”

Chapter Thirty: Buried

Since they only had a little time to rest, Roman and Nadine decided to take full advantage of it.

“I don’t know if this is exactly what we should be doing,” Nadine said, Roman kissing her neck, both of them now nude. Celia was deactivated, Coma standing outside the tent, on guard as always.

“Maybe you’re right,” Roman started to say, moving off her.

Nadine reached down and grabbed his cock. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

She guided him in, exposing her neck and gasping as he filled her.

Roman got into a rhythm relatively quickly, beads of sweat appearing on his brow as he pounded harder and harder, Nadine digging her nails into his back, whispering his name, both of them finding an intense rhythm that threatened the integrity of the tiny bed.

They fucked like it was the last time either of them would ever have a chance to be intimate with someone.

It was possible that this was truly the case, that they wouldn’t make it across the border, that the Centralian forces would be too strong.

Roman had to think this way.

It was better to be humble and prepared than assume he would just tear through anything that stood in his way.

And he translated these thoughts to his next thrust as Nadine’s fingers grazed against the wound on his back, Roman ignoring the sudden sting.

It would heal.

He forcefully turned her over, Nadine laughing as she whispered, “Make me yours.”

Roman did just that, grabbing a fistful of her hair and pulling her head back as he slipped inside, Nadine letting out a moan. He was sweating even more now. A few drips made it to his chin, falling onto the small of her back as he continued to give it his all, the bed frame starting to give, Roman’s grunts growing louder.

Eventually, Roman flipped onto his back and Nadine got on top, facing away from him this time, the former spy increasing her speed, using her hands on his knees for support.

Every time it looked like he was about to slip out of her, the head of his cock kept him in, Roman letting her take complete control, not even guiding her ass with his hands.

Nadine whispered that she was close.

She rolled to her back, telling Roman to get on top again as she fingered herself.

He let her conduct him, a thought sparking at the back of his mind that this wasn’t dissimilar to how it had been with Miranda, Roman not at all caring, happy to give pleasure.

And seeing her play with herself triggered Roman as well, his orgasm making his entire body tremble, his forearms like pillars as he held himself up and finished inside her.

The two were breathless for a moment, and then they were back in each other’s arms, neither of them caring that they were covered in each other’s juices, that Roman was sweaty, that his semen was still inside Nadine, some of it dripping out of her pussy.

They were primal, they were ready to take one final risk.

They fell asleep like that, Coma waking them both a couple hours later.

Roman watched Nadine put on enough clothes to make herself presentable, the former spy waddling to the door and slipping outside to use the restroom.

Roman was cold now, the bed cool from their sweat, still a bit damp.

He ran his hand through his black hair and stood, shaking his arms out.

Coma, who still stood before the twin bed, looked from his chest down to his groin area. “It’s been a while…”

“It really has,” he told her. “When all this is over…”

“If she doesn’t mind…”

“I have a feeling if we make it through this, nothing is really going to matter anymore. This is it. This is the last step toward our destiny.”

“Our destiny, huh?”

“Yes,” he said as he lifted his hand, Coma coming toward him and placing her hand in his. He squeezed it. “Let’s make it to the other side.”

“Let’s.”

Roman animated Celia, who immediately started moving around the tent gathering his clothing and handing it to him. He thought about animating his tiniest doll but saved everyone from listening to her nonsense for the time being.

Nadine returned, and once she was fully dressed, the four of them made their way down an embankment to a wide-open area where rebel troops were already gathered.

Roman couldn’t help but feel that they were like sitting ducks. But he didn’t say anything, already making his peace with the situation through the conversation he’d had with Marcus.

Right now, all that absolutely mattered to him was making it across.

He wasn’t here to fight their battle or help them change their own government.

All that was beyond his scope, Roman close to the end of this chapter of his life.

And he couldn’t help but get the sense he’d had when he was about to quit his job, knowing that it was almost over, that he was so close to taking his freedom, to being who he wanted to be.

To doing what he wanted.

He’d been exploited by his own government, asked to do things that went against his sense of morality. His power, if he chose to stay with his government, would be utilized without his consent for the rest of his life.

And perhaps, if he really had taken a moment to think about this, to not simply start moving forward alongside Nadine, perhaps Roman would have understood where Margo had been coming from, and maybe why it had all gone wrong.

But he likely would have concluded that this was all a subjective opinion, that there was more wrong with the deadly woman who had animated his wife’s corpse than the notion that she’d been exploited by her own country.

About a quarter kilometer ahead of the front line now, Roman relaxed a little, Nadine by his side, his combat doll and Celia with him as well.

They were still in a forested area, but he could tell the tree cover was starting to wane and soon they would be out in the open.

And while he wasn’t quite an outdoorsman, Roman turned out to be correct in this assumption, the tree line ending and Nadine stopping him before he could take another step forward.

“The border is there,” she said, nodding toward a series of blinking lights in the distance that were just faint enough that Roman at first thought they were stars. Coma and Celia fanned out, Coma’s arms already sharp and held at the ready.

“So this is going to be the staging area then?”

“They have a pre-staging area, which was where we just were, so yes, this would be the final staging area.”

“Makes sense.”

“Remember…” She exhaled audibly, steeling herself. “Move forward, and don’t look back.”

“We’re going to do this,” he told her, placing her hand on her shoulder.

Nadine hugged him. “If not, at least we ended the night on a high note.”

The rebels were in the staging area all of fifteen minutes when a cloak masking a line of Centralian exemplars lifted.

A surprise attack.

Roman grabbed Nadine’s hand and pulled her to the left as a searing blast cut into the middle of their ranks, some of the rebels responding by firing their wrist guards as they ran forward, the braver bunch activating their necklaces.

Other rebels were scared shitless, some turning back, a few leaping out of the way, panic spreading through their ranks.

Roman felt the creep of a telepath at the back of his head screaming for the rebels to fight. He almost joined the battle until he realized the call to arms was emanating from Marcus, Roman suddenly impressed with just how proficient the man’s power had turned out to be.

Perhaps he was the elusive Type I…

As discussed, Roman and Nadine kept to the left, trying to move to the outskirts of the battle.

It was dark out, the moon a pale sliver hanging from a cloud, the only light coming from discharged weapons and exemplars with elemental abilities.

As Roman ran, he started to lift a wall up to his right, protecting his small group. His stone structure grew in size, and just when he thought he had shielded them enough, it came tumbling down as a team of strongmen burst through, one of them lunging for him.

Roman used his assailant’s own skull cavity to crush the man’s brain.

A blast over his shoulder caused him to step aside, Nadine hitting her mark, a square-shaped woman without a neck coughing up blood as she fell to her knees.

Roman crushed this woman’s head as well, Coma and Celia taking down the final exemplar, their bladed arms moving fluidly through the man’s muscles.

And just before Roman could strengthen his wall, more Centralian exemplars tore through the structure, beast morphers, elementalists, a speedster who was stopped dead in his tracks by Nadine, who was an absolute crack shot.

Even with the fight spilling toward them, Roman had to look at her in amazement. “You hit him?”

But rather than respond, Nadine activated her own necklace and pressed a pillar from the soil that stopped a horned woman charging at them.

“We have to move forward!” Nadine reminded Roman, both of them fighting their way through the exemplars, Celia and Coma now a bit ahead, engaging a man with skin hard as stone.

Roman shattered the man’s legs, bits of rock springing into the air and forming a cloud of fine dust.

A teleporter appeared behind Roman, sinking a fist into his back.

Nadine was on the teleporter in a matter of seconds. She tackled him to the ground and fired her wrist guard at point-blank range, just under the man’s chin, leaving a bloodied splatter against the cool night grass.

A woman swooped down from the sky, and Roman lifted a spiked pillar from the soil that cut through her body. He flung her body forward, taking out a man with blue skin and razor-sharp teeth.

Roman summoned another spike from the ground, cutting through the blue-skinned man. He turned his attention to a woman who was just about to blast him with a concentrated burst of energy, her arms twisting behind her back and snapping, the explosion throwing her a meter into the air.

Focusing, Roman lifted the land beneath him, forming a tidal wave of stone and hardened dirt that smashed onto a pair of exemplars. Roman jumped off at the last moment to roll off to the side, back to his feet where he animated the bones of another strongman charging at them.

The man’s bones tore out of his flesh, white on red, the muscled Centralian a mass of organs and viscera once Nadine’s blast finished the job.

Roman felt the screeching inside his head and looked around frantically, trying to locate the telepath.

Suddenly he was standing in front of Celia’s dead body, Margo crouched in the rafters above, ready to pounce.

Roman began to backpedal, fear shooting through him until he remembered that none of this was real, that it was the attack of a goddamn telepath.

But Roman couldn’t do what he normally would have done, clear the playing field with a swipe of his hand. No, that would bring Nadine into his sphere of influence, and the last thing he wanted was to see her wind up as collateral damage…

The image stopped immediately, Roman blinking his eyes open to see Nadine standing before him, the woman keeping her wrist guard at the ready, a body falling about five meters away.

Nadine was swept off her feet by a wave of force, the ground between them separating as an elementalist ripped through the soil.

The man burst out of a hole in the ground wearing a mask with little goggles, a wicked look on his face as he started to grow stones out of his flesh.

“Impressive,” Roman said, the man’s body twisting in unnatural ways as Roman took control of his bones and crushed his vital organs.

A great plume of fire formed a circle around Roman and Nadine, the flames lifting higher and higher as they solidified.

Roman was just about to take charge of the fire when he noticed…

“Ava?” he asked, pausing when he saw the redheaded exemplar floating in front of him, flames licking from her hands.

“Fuck,” Roman mouthed as he caught the fireball she’d heaved at him, returning it to her.

He was drenched in sweat now, his skin burning from the heat.

His breaths almost painful, Roman began manipulating the inferno raging around him, quelling it as he glanced at Nadine to see she was struggling to press herself up.

“I’ll take care of this,” he told her, but try as he might, Roman couldn’t bring himself to animate Ava’s organs.

Had he done so, he could have ended it right there, the famed fire user spiraling down and dying before impact.

But he couldn’t.

She was his teacher.

They had been lovers.

And even though he had a feeling that only one of them would make it out of this alive, Roman couldn’t help but empathize with her at that moment, knowing what she must be going through.

Because he was going through the same thing, and it was why, trained as she was, Ava was hesitating.

Roman didn’t normally wish he was a telepath, but at that moment he wished he could communicate with her, say something to her, tell her to go and never return.

But he didn’t.

He simply took control of her uniform and started to tighten it, part of him hoping he could make her pass out from either the pain or…

He wasn’t sure enough of his powers to actively manage her lung capacity.

He could certainly do something to her internal organs, but he hadn’t yet experimented with controlling an organ with the hopes of either enhancing or deflating its natural function.

Would he be able to heal doing this?

Roman cast away the thought as Ava’s hair flared up, wings of fire lifting behind her.

She collided with Roman and brought him to the ground, baring her teeth as her skull burned red hot.

“Ava…” Roman managed to say, placing his hand on her chest, squeezing her left breast to let her know that he had, or could, take complete control of her heart and kill her in an instant. “Leave.”

“I’m sorry, Roman…”

And even though there was fire raging all around him, the smell of burning fabric and grass meeting his nostrils, he could smell the wine on her breath.

Roman braced himself to be burned alive, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to attack her, that he wasn’t going to kill someone he cared about, at least not Ava.

And he could tell by the look on her face that this wasn’t what she wanted to do either, that it was something she had been ordered to do the same way Roman had been ordered to kill Kevin and Nadine.

But Ava would never get the chance to overcome her current obstacle.

She would never have another glass of wine, nor would she ever lie in her bed contemplating the choices she’d made in her life, her sister’s death, the relationship she wanted to have with one of her students even though she knew it was wrong, the fact that she should have just disappeared before heading to the East.

Roman heard a crack as Ava’s neck snapped, the exemplar falling to her side.

He caught glimpse of a woman with dark hair in a Centralian exemplar uniform standing just beyond the flames. Her female companion quickly ran to the right, meeting Coma and Celia.

Roman recognized the second woman immediately as the doll he’d had custom-made, the one that was supposed to be a life-sized version of Casper.

But the woman with black hair…

“We can’t help but be brother and sister, can we?” she asked as she quelled the fire completely. “Just look at our hair.” Margo approached Roman, the terrible woman instantly taking control of his body.

He couldn’t move from his prone position, his bones pressing against his muscles, his face straining, his eyes starting to bulge as he was forced to stare his half-sister down.

“I’ll…” Roman felt a rage in his heart that he’d rarely experienced.

“One move and everything goes black,” she told him. “If you don’t think I can draw quicker than you…”

“Why?” Roman asked suddenly, his life flashing before his eyes.

There were no other options.

He was going to die here today; he wasn’t going to make it across the border.

Even if he tried to do something to Margo, she would win in the end, Roman dead before he could see the results of his action.

“Why?” he asked, louder this time.

“There’s no reason any longer,” she said, a darkness spreading across her face.

“Why!?” Roman bellowed, the ground beneath him quaking.

“Baby brother,” Margo said, crouching before him now. “We never got a chance to know each other.”

“Fuck you…” Roman whispered through gritted teeth, reaching out to her heart as well.

She placed her hand on her chest. “Isn’t that cute… Just like your big sister, you’re learning to use your power for the good of humankind. Did anyone tell you? I knew our father. He trained me. He…” Margo’s eye twitched. “He…”

“I don’t fucking care,” Roman told her, his nostrils flaring, oblivious now to the fight that was still happening all around him.

Margo’s doll continued to engage Celia and Coma off to the side while a bigger fight raged on, the exemplars versus the rebels, everything from explosions to bloodcurdling screams to shifts in the land to the whistling sound of teleporters and speedsters moving amongst the ranks, all of it a muddy cantankerous blur on Roman’s smeared periphery.

“Have you always been so apathetic, baby brother?” Margo asked, her voice shaky.

“You… My wife…”

“Relax, she was already dead,” Margo said in a playful tone. “Once you delve deeper into this power, you’ll understand that living and dead don’t really mean anything. Wait, no you won’t. You will never understand the true nature of this power, nor its limits. I only wish we could have grown stronger together. But I don’t think that’s how our little story ends.”

“Fuck… you…”

She reached forward and placed her hand on Roman’s cheek, massaging her fingers against his beard stubble. “I don’t fuck men, unfortunately. It’s a real tragedy, all of this. I really wish we could have had a cup of tea, or perhaps a bottle of wine. Just to get to know each other better. But now…” Margo looked around, the battle raging all around her. “But now we’ve come too far. I didn’t know if you would attempt to make the crossing, but it appears I got lucky. And you didn’t get so lucky. But that’s okay. You know, we’re the last ones.”

Roman tried to find the words, whatever they were, but his heart was beating too fast now, and he could feel that Margo had a grip on his entire body, as if he were lying on a bed of razor-sharp nails and slowly succumbing to their sharp tips, his nerves firing, his thoughts cascading away from them as he noticed that she was…

Roman struggled to breathe.

“The lungs are particularly hard to control,” Margo said, her hand still on his cheek. “It takes quite the finesse. Goodbye…”

Suddenly, the hold on Roman’s body washed away.

His ability to use his power also vanished, Roman immediately responding by trying to push Margo off him.

He stopped mid-action as Margo’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, her mouth opening, blood trickling down her lips and off the line of her chin.

She fell to the right, and as she did her doll collapsed as well.

Roman gasped, turning to Nadine, seeing that she’d not only activated her Zero Ring, she’d also activated her necklace—that Nadine had done the impossible.

She had killed Margo.

But Roman had to be sure, and rather than help up Nadine, who was still sitting off to his left, he brought his hand back and exploded Margo’s skull, blood splattering into Roman’s face.

He then ripped her limbs from her body and threw his hand out wide, a line of soil rippling toward her doll and retrieving it, looping it back over to bury the doll on top of Margo.

He did this again and again, Roman straining as he pressed all of his power into the ground and buried Margo deep beneath the battlefield.

He fell backward.

Nadine crawled over to him. “We have to… We have to go,” she said, her hair a mess, smudges across her face, a hardened look in her eyes.

Roman sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah… Let’s go.”

Roman ran, Nadine and his dolls keeping up with him, their goal so close he could practically reach out and touch it.

He couldn’t help but feel a melancholic sense of utter abandonment, a wild sensation moving through him, both from the adrenaline and what had just happened.

He wanted to grab Nadine and hug her, kiss her for saving his life, express to her in any way he could that she was incredible, more powerful than any woman he’d ever met before, that she continued to enthuse him with her cunning and sheer skill.

But he couldn’t.

They still hadn’t made it through this.

Roman flitted his fingers across his pocket, Casper coming to life.

“What did I miss?” she asked as she moved up to his shoulder and sat, holding on to the fabric of his jacket as his feet continued to propel him forward. “And if I didn’t already say it, fuck you for deanimating me.”

“Be on the lookout for anything coming our way,” Roman told her hurriedly. “You’re the eyes in the back of my head.”

The fight was mostly happening off to their right, a good hundred yards out as they tried to move as far away from the action as they could.

They just needed to reach the wall.

If they reached the wall, Roman could take care of it from there, even if there were sentries or other exemplars ready to guard it.

Roman wished in that moment that he was a shapeshifter so he could disguise himself as a Centralian soldier and “take these three as hostages.”

It might not work, but it would at least get them to the other side without having to deal with too many casualties.

But who was he kidding?

There were already hundreds dead, more dying as the two sides clashed and exemplars appeared in droves, the Eastern Province forces already overpowered despite the fact that they still had more rebels aiming to join the fight.

There were going to be casualties.

A man with stretchy arms spotted them and catapulted over, Roman quickly taking control of his body, turning it into a pretzel, and sending it back toward the battle.

“You should have just blown his eyes out,” Casper said.

“I should have,” Roman agreed as he started to taste blood.

Blood?

It was through his next breath that he realized just how hard he’d been running, and he’d failed to realize just how much energy he was exerting.

He paused for a moment, Nadine stopping with him, her hands on her knees as she sucked in deep breaths of air.

Roman wiped the sweat off his brow, looking at her with his mouth open as he continued to breathe deeply. “Almost there…”

“Almost,” she said breathlessly.

“I’ve got to focus.”

“Then, focus.”

“Thank you… for back there…”

Nadine clasped her hands together and turned her face up, sucking in a deep breath of air. “I’m just glad it’s over.”

“Not over yet,” Roman reminded her.

“We’ve got to keep moving.”

“I’m so thirsty…”

“I didn’t even think about that,” she said. “Fuck. Me too. Me too.”

They continued to arc away from the battle, away from the spotlight.

The cloud coverage overhead was to their advantage, the dark sky aiding in their concealment. Roman noticed it was starting to become breezier, and he couldn’t help but think he was close to home, a feeling that filled him with ambiguity.

They pushed onward, the wall separating Centralia and the Eastern Province suddenly in sight.

“Finally, back to civilization,” Casper said joyfully. “Now let’s find that little fucker Eli and that bimbo Lisa and peace out like we’ve never peaced out before.”

“That’s the plan,” Roman mumbled as he glanced at the wall, moving with Nadine behind the shadow cast by a structure built on the wall walk to prevent teleportation.

“All right,” Roman said, cracking his knuckles.

“Make the hole, and let’s get out of here,” said Nadine.

Roman turned to the wall, and as he did it started to move, shifting aside.

An enormous wave of water rushed out and slammed into the four of them, sending their small group sprawling to the ground.

Casper flew off Roman’s shoulder, more water incoming as a woman lifted from the waves, her form only visible for a second before switching back to liquid.

“That’s Naomi!” Casper shouted, trying to swim toward Roman now. “I’d recognize that wet bitch anywhere!”

Nadine activated her Zero Ring and the water sucked up into the body of a woman, Naomi stumbling forward, confirming Casper’s rash statement.

Nadine scrambled over to the water user and dropped her knee between Naomi’s shoulders, pointing a wrist guard at the back of her head.

“No!” the wall shouted as it morphed into Jess.

“Not another move,” Nadine said, Naomi immediately ceasing her struggle.

Jess froze, her hands already in the air.

“You two dum-dums should have stayed in Centralia,” Casper said, the tiny doll already back on Roman’s shoulder, having easily scaled his wet clothing. “Isn’t that right, Daddy?”

“It’s up to you how you want to end this,” Roman told Jess, ignoring Casper. Coma looked at Roman, her arms still morphed into sharp blades.

“We’ll have to have…” Jess shook her head. “Get our memories wiped.”

“You will. Because if you don’t try to stop us, and they find out…”

“Do something,” Naomi said to Jess through gritted teeth, but there was no authority in her voice. The water user knew that if Jess acted, both of them would be dead.

“You’re young,” Roman reasoned with Jess, taking a step closer to her. “Try to get out before…” He thought of Ava. “Just try to get out.”

Jess narrowed her eyes on Roman. “Wait…”

“I’m serious…”

“You killed her, didn’t you?” she asked. “You fucking killed her!”

“Who…?”

“Ava. She was supposed to stay back with us, but she flew forward anyway to see if she could find you. We lost sight of her flames. You… you killed her!”

“No, that was Margo,” Roman said with disdain. “She disguised herself as a Centralian soldier. Ava was attempting to…” He shook his head. “She was doing what she was ordered to do. Streamlined removal. Me. And then Margo intervened. So maybe you shouldn’t have your memories wiped. Maybe you should let me incapacitate both of you. Yeah, that makes more sense. There is the serum, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t know how many our government has saved already, but they will be able to heal you.”

“Are you serious?” Naomi asked.

“Wait, before you do…” Jess gulped. “Is Margo dead? Can I at least report that Margo is dead?”

Roman nodded. “She’s gone, buried somewhere on the battlefield. But don’t tell them that part lest they try to dig her up. Just tell them I exploded her body into a million pieces and they’ll never find her. I did the same to her doll.”

Nadine cleared her throat, Roman glancing at her.

He watched as she quickly pressed a button on her wrist guard that switched it to stun.

Before anyone else could say anything, Nadine fired a shot at the back of Naomi’s head, the water user out cold.

“Stand still,” Roman told Jess as Nadine deactivated her Zero Ring. As soon as she did, Roman broke Jess’s legs, much to her chagrin. He swooped the soil up from beneath her, burying her all the way to her neck.

“This is… This is how you’re going to leave me?” Jess asked, abhorred, her eyes a mixture of fear and anger.

“They’ll find you. If they don’t, Naomi will wake up and find you. You are in charge of the narrative now. You won’t have to do much lying to make it work. You tried to stop us, we took down Naomi first, and then I spared your life.”

Jess groaned at the pain in her legs. “But did you really have to break them?”

“I figured it would look more realistic,” Roman said with a shrug.

“Shouldn’t have fucked with us!” Casper chimed in.

Roman turned to his two dolls and nodded, letting them know he was ready to go.

Celia’s bladed arms began to melt away, Coma keeping her weapon at the ready.

As Nadine walked past Jess, she also fired a shot to the woman’s skull, incapacitating her for the time being.

“She’ll be fine,” Nadine assured Roman as they neared the wall, ignoring Casper’s guffaw. “Aside from the fact that she’s going to wake up buried in a hole in the ground with her legs broken.”

“Yeah,” said Roman, “aside from that.”

Chapter Thirty-One: Passports

Roman, Nadine, and his dolls reached the other side of the wall. After sealing up the hole, Roman discovered they were at the back of a complex, large spotlights lighting the path in front of them.

“It’s not ideal…” he began, forming a wide gap in the ground.

A sewer moved beneath the complex, Roman immediately wrinkling his nose at the smell as he lowered the four of them onto a brick walkway.

There was already water dripping above from the pipes he’d rearranged, which Roman ignored as he sealed up the hole before their small group turned toward the West.

“I don’t know where we are exactly…” he started to say.

“I’ll find out,” said Nadine as they moved through the sewer, Roman ignoring the stench, his focus now on getting out and letting Nadine take the lead.

They moved quickly.

Roman created a path for them whenever one was needed, Casper occasionally making an offhand remark, Celia and Coma completely silent.

The sewer was filled with sounds, the water gushing to their right at times, other pipes opening up and revealing new passageways, the occasional mouse slipping away upon sensing them.

They pressed on, Nadine pausing at one point to look up and read a placard near the top of the ladder.

“A little bit further,” she said.

“Right,” Roman said, seeing that the placard listed the street it was beneath. They were just a few blocks away now from where he assumed the Eastern border wall was erected.

They needed to go further, and while they were expecting to find something in the sewer to possibly prevent illegal immigrants, they weren’t expecting a portal to open in front of them, three exemplars taking shape just as the teleporter zipped away.

A towering man in a dark uniform stepped up, Roman recognizing the masked man almost immediately.

“Mister Fist?” he whispered, taking in the famous exemplar.

But before he could take control of the strongman’s heart, William Bottorf, the duplicator Roman had once trained against, sent his replicas forward, and this was followed by a mental blast from the telepath known as MindLenz scraping against the inside of Roman’s skull.

Nadine was tossed aside by one of the replicas, Coma coming to her rescue and cutting through.

“A telepath…” Roman whispered as he crouched with his hands over his ears.

“I’ve got it!” Casper shouted.

The tiny doll launched out of Roman’s pocket, running toward the three exemplars.

Roman could no longer see by this point, and his eardrums felt like they had been shattered. Everything around him started to flash black and red, Roman barely noticing the giant muscled man charging in his direction.

The constraints of his environment returned to him in a matter of seconds, including the sound of a woman screaming. Roman glanced up to see that Casper was attached to a telepath’s face via one of her bladed arms, the woman trying to pull her off while Casper stabbed her tiny blades in each time, making it even worse.

Mister Fist looked at the horrific sight, and he was just turning back to Roman when Celia slammed into the strongman, attempting to penetrate his flesh with both her blades.

He grabbed her, lifted the doll in the air, and broke her over his knee.

“No!” Roman shouted, an unhinged fury rolling through him.

Mister Fist tossed her aside, Celia struggling to get back to her feet, her lower half moving in an awkward way.

“Roman,” the big man said as he approached Roman, who still had his back against the sewer wall.

“You’re dead,” Roman said, suddenly feeling for the big man’s heart. He was just about to yank all the arteries from it when Mister Fist paused, lifted his hands to his featureless mask, and removed it.

Roman gulped, losing his concentration.

“B-Bill?”

Sure enough, the man standing before him was none other than Bill, the leader of Roman’s Heroes Anonymous group, the man who had given him hell for nearly a year before Roman was finally free of those accursed gatherings.

“You’re… you’re a fraud…” Roman said, his eyes burning with hatred. “You tell non-exemplars they’re nothing, yet look at you, you’re… you’re Mister Fist. You’re a goddamn commercial superhero. How the hell are you going around telling people to not want to be superheroes?”

“Roman, you’re under arrest,” Bill said solemnly, a hint of disgust in his voice.

“You’re not going to arrest me,” Roman said, finding his voice. “You’re going to die here tonight.”

Bill cracked his knuckles and subsequently had an aneurysm.

He fell to his knees, his eyes rolling to the back of his head and his lower jaw twisting to the right, the big man falling.

One of William Bottorf’s replicants barked in anger. Roman took control of the brick wall next to the man and clocked him hard enough to crack the duplicator’s skull, the man dead before he hit the ground.

The only person left alive at that point was the telepath, MindLenz, who was still swatting at Casper, the woman no longer able to see, her face a mask of blood.

Nadine put the telepath out of her misery, blasting her in the chest with a concentrated shot from her wrist guard.

“This… this is going to take a while to unpack,” Roman said under his breath as he stumbled in Nadine’s direction, his mind still spinning from MindLenz’s attack. “More exemplars will be here any minute.”

“Then we should move as fast as possible.” Nadine looked up at the top of the sewer tunnel.

“Right.”

Roman lifted a platform, melting the ceiling away as Nadine joined him.

Coma placed Casper in her pocket and then went to help Celia. Roman quickly turned his attention to the doll and gently glided his hand over her side, where the metal of her spine was poking out. He managed to press it back into her body, seamlessly integrating it into her form again.

He was no anatomist, but he figured it would do for now until he could spend time fixing Celia later.

“Who was that guy again?” Casper asked as they lifted onto a wide boulevard, not far from a trolley station.

“Let’s go there,” Nadine said, pointing to the south.

“Good call,” he told her, seeing there was a trolley coming soon, most of the ones in the city running twenty-four hours.

As they jogged over to the station, Roman quickly explained to Casper that Bill was the head of the Heroes Anonymous meetings he’d been required by law to attend. And apparently, he was actually a famous exemplar who’d once been on the team with Ava, and that Roman had just killed him.

“I had to,” he said, mostly for himself.

“Of course you had to,” Casper said. “He would have crushed your skull.”

“He would have taken us to jail, me specifically. Nadine…”

“You’re naïve,” Nadine told Roman as they reached the trolley platform, suddenly turning to them. She caught her breath, a dark expression moving across her eyes. “The little doll is right. If the order was to remove you, why would Mister Fist, who also works for the Centralian government, not follow that order?”

“Maybe… maybe you’re right,” Roman said as a trolley appeared on the far end of the track, sounding its horn.

And as ramshackle as they looked, the four of them in rebel clothing painted in blood and debris, they got on, the trolley mostly empty aside from an older couple who made it a point not to look at them.

They got out at the next station, where they switched to another trolley, this one empty and heading away from the border.

“What’s the plan?” Roman asked Nadine once the trolley had started up, the cabin creaking as they took a seat.

“We have to head north, but you already knew that,” she said. “Eli and Lisa are waiting for us at a hotel near the border crossing to the Northern Alliance, the crossing near the North Lane Station specifically. I have two passports hidden in a stash spot near Empyrean Park, which means we’ll have to head west and then northeast.”

“Not four passports?”

“Two.”

“But…”

Nadine turned to Roman and placed a hand on his knee, lowering her voice. “We’re going to have to leave them behind.”

“I…” Roman shook his head. “That was never part of the plan.”

“It’s the only way,” said Coma, his combat doll standing before them. Celia was seated as well on Roman’s right, Casper still peeking out of Coma’s pocket.

“He can still bring me,” the tiny doll said mockingly.

She swung from Coma’s pocket to Roman’s leg, crawling up until she found a more comfortable position on his shoulder.

He shook his head. “But…”

“You can just get new versions of us in the North,” Celia said, nodding firmly. “That’s where we came from, right?”

Roman thought back to the conversations he’d had with Emelia, the empath who worked at the sex shop.

“I believe so,” Roman finally said, unable to hide the grimness that was forming on his face.

“It makes sense. We won’t be separated for very long,” said Celia. “You have to get to safety first.”

“But how do I know…” He bit his lip. “How do I know I can bring you two back?”

“You’ve gotten better with your power, and by the time you’re able to get two new dolls, you’ll be even stronger,” Celia assured Roman, looking at him compassionately with her big purple eyes. “Please, don’t worry about us. You get to safety first, and then you can deal with recreating us.”

“Finally, being tiny pays off,” Casper said, doing a little dance by wagging her hips. “Don’t worry, Roman. I’ll entertain you until you get your two best friends back. Trust me, I can be stern and serious like Coma,” she said, mimicking Coma’s voice, “or sweet and dumb like Celia,” she said in a bubbly voice.

“Shut up, Casper.” Roman deactivated the doll. He caught her as she fell from his shoulder and shoved her into his pocket, returning his attention to Celia and Coma. “Are… are you two sure?”

They both nodded.

“It’s the only way,” Nadine said. “I only have two more passports, aside from the two that Eli and Lisa already have. We’re going to have to cross the border early and move quickly. We can do some checking around using Lisa’s power if necessary. Roman, this is serious,” Nadine said, taking his head in her hands. “We’re too close now to make hasty decisions.”

They reached Empyrean Park, which was one of Centralia’s most famous nature areas funded by arguably its richest family, the Knights.

It was locked up for the night, but Nadine led Roman around to a wall on the right, which easily opened.

“It’s in the park?” he asked.

“I’ve always been a ‘hidden in plain sight’ type of girl,” Nadine said as she grabbed his hand, leading them through a forest of large trees arranged in a way that provided maximum ground space for picnics and other activities. The trees’ canopies touched, but their trunks were always perfectly spaced.

It had been ages since Roman visited this park; he couldn’t recall the last time he’d come here, if they’d been hosting a festival or if it had been one of the night farmer’s markets they held during the summer, exquisite fruits on display and wonderful, locally sourced wines available.

Keeping clear of the lights that lit the park’s cobblestone path, Nadine came to a fork in the road and headed left, Coma and Celia trailing just a bit behind them.

Since Roman hadn’t fully repaired Celia’s body after it had been broken by Mister Fist, she now walked with a bit of a limp, Coma occasionally helping her while she continued to stay vigilant, always ready.

Nadine came to a storage shed with a concrete bench on its back end.

It was here she crouched, looking up at Roman.

“Normally, I would have to dig it out by hand, but since you’re here…”

Roman nodded, the soil carefully sifting away until he found a thick metal box, which he then animated the bottom of to push it out of the ground.

Nadine opened the box, retrieving several rolls of cash and two passports. “This is it. Let’s go.”

“Leave us here,” Celia suddenly told Roman, looking at Coma for confirmation. “You have to.”

His combat doll nodded. “It’s better this way. It’s time.”

“They’re right,” said Nadine, lightly placing her hand on Roman’s arm. “From here, we’ll meet Lisa and Eli, wait just a few hours, and then cross the border as soon as it opens.”

“All…” Roman shook his head, and with a deep breath, he silenced the remorse he was already starting to feel. “All right. Just give me a minute.”

“Certainly,” Nadine said before she made her way back to the main thoroughfare, crossing her arms over her chest as she gazed out at the distance, ready to engage anyone who dared stumble upon them.

“I won’t forget either of you,” Roman told his two dolls, bringing them into his arms. “As soon as I can, I’ll bring you back. In similar forms, hopefully in the exact same bodies. I’ll get it right.”

“I know you will,” said Celia, tucking her head just a bit as she tried to hide the emotion she was feeling.

“Just get us there safely,” Coma finally told him. “We… I…”

“It’s my only goal now,” said Roman. “We will get there safely, and as soon as I’m able, I’ll bring you two back. I promise.”

He stepped away from them, wanting to spend more time with each of his dolls but also wanting get this over quickly, before he had second thoughts.

In that moment, Roman relived all the experiences he’d shared with them, from Coma’s first arrival to how Celia had brightened his life in the end.

He saw them lifelessly sitting on his couch in the month his powers had been stripped from him; Coma standing stoically, her legs wide, her short skirt beating in the wind as her arms morphed into blades; Celia preparing food, being so kind to anyone who came across her path, from teleporters to Roman’s acquaintances. He recalled the first time he’d been intimate with Celia, how soft she had been, how perfect. And the times he had been with Coma as well, how their relationship had blossomed in the Western Province.

“Goodbye…” Roman whispered.

Celia grabbed Coma’s hand, and as she did, Roman began to melt their forms together, a spiral of soil taking them deeper and deeper into the ground. He smoothed over the top, then gathered fallen leaves with his power and swept them over the space where the dolls had just been standing, hiding the evidence.

“Let’s do it,” he told Nadine.

It wasn’t long before they were on a trolley heading east again, toward North Lane Station.

No one was in their cabin, and at one point the lights flickered, the hair on Roman’s arms standing at attention as he prepared for an attack.

But none came.

He had the notion to send a message to Emelia, asking her where the doll craftsman lived, and to also say goodbye to the kind empath who had always been so understanding of his situation.

But he didn’t.

He knew any mental messages he sent out would be monitored; he didn’t want to bring her into this. And even though it was obvious that he would be heading to the Northern Alliance, as this was where most fugitives headed, he didn’t want to implicate the doll designer in any way, which would possibly lead the Centralian government to his location.

No, Roman wanted to keep things simple.

It might take some time, but he would find out who had created them, this famed doll designer.

And once he did, Celia and Coma would be part of his life.

They made it to the station, Nadine keeping to the shadows as they moved to a hotel off one of the side streets. It wasn’t a shabby place, but definitely one that had seen better days, evident in its marquee and the two backlit letters that had fizzled out.

A breeze blew past, Roman enjoying it while it lasted, his attention moving to a light flickering in one of the windows on the second floor.

“Do your thing,” Nadine told Roman, taking his hand.

The ground lifted beneath him and rose to the window, the glass expanding and melting into the walls.

“You’re here!” Eli said, the blond-haired boy healer running forward and hugging Nadine.

He was with Lisa Painstake, the exemplar with the Soul Speed power. While Eli was excited, pink-haired Lisa seemed a bit hesitant as she greeted the two of them.

“They’re all yours,” Nadine said, handing Roman the passports for him to modify. She turned her attention to Lisa, explaining all that had happened, the young woman nodding as she tried to keep up. Eli asked several times where Celia and Coma were.

Roman took the documents from Nadine and moved to a table positioned in front of a picture of a boat out to sea, the storm nearly capsizing it.

Nadine and Roman would get across the border, and from there, start over.

A new life, one with ties to the past, but one they themselves controlled, a destiny they had molded.

Roman paused on the page with biographical information, smirking at the thought that all of this had started with passports.

And now, oddly enough, it was ending with them.

Epilogue

Roman rolled over, careful to not put too much pressure on Nadine’s growing belly.

The nap he’d just taken had been a relatively short one, his dreams nonexistent. It had been a while since he’d dreamed, Abby only coming to visit him once since he’d made it to the Northern Alliance, the dreams he could remember fuzzy at best.

No falling, no endless field, no Celia.

As far away from civilization as they could muster, Nadine and Roman had chosen a seaside village known as Brookmaid to escape to.

Only a few thousand people lived there, the majority of the population expats.

No one spoke about where they’d come from or why they’d chosen Brookmaid, which was exactly how Roman and Nadine wanted it.

Brookmaid had high taxes, but that was easy for Roman to cover, especially with his ability to counterfeit money. The currency used by the Northern Alliance was a bit different than what was used in Centralia, but paper was paper, and as long as he had an authentic piece to base it on, no one knew the difference.

The sleepy seaside village of Brookmaid ran along the side of a mountain, the homes pressed together not unlike some of the brownstones in Centralia. Unlike Centralia, the view here was expansive, the sea a glistening swath of color, the sounds of the waves reaching Roman’s ears every morning with a light briny scent in the air.

Sitting on the edge of their bed now, Roman turned back to Nadine, smiling at the woman he’d come to care so deeply for. She slept on her side, naturally cradling her stomach, a few strands of her hair in her face.

Roman heard some commotion in the hallway. Stepping out, he found Eli being chased by Casper, the tiny doll wielding a wooden sword Roman had crafted months ago.

“Quiet,” Roman told them, carefully shutting the bedroom door.

“Sorry, Mr. Roman,” Eli said, the boy stopping and hiding his hands behind his back.

Casper scaled the boy’s shorts. When she made it to his shoulder, she placed both hands on her hips and stared mockingly at Roman.

“Someone is excited.”

“More nervous than excited,” said Roman.

“I’m sure you are,” Casper said coyly.

She was clad in clothing not too dissimilar to what the locals wore, Roman having found a small doll in a bathing suit with a sunhat and a pair of leather sandals that actually fit her.

“Too bad Lisa isn’t here to see,” said Eli, a frown taking shape on his face.

“She’s in the big city,” Casper told him. “Remember? She got bored here and wanted a boyfriend.”

Roman gave Casper a look that told her not to elaborate on what she was telling the boy.

Rather than continue, the tiny doll stuck her tongue out at him and blew raspberries.

Eli laughed, covering his mouth once he realized he was being rude. “Sorry, Mr. Roman,” he apologized.

“You’re a bad influence on him,” Roman told Casper.

“Please. I’m the best influence he’s ever had. No one fucks with him because of me. I mean, no one messes with him.” Casper pointed at herself and mouthed, ‘Because of me.’

“Yeah,” Roman said as he turned to the kitchen, letting the two play in the living room. “Just keep it down,” he called after them.

“It’s not our fault you knocked Nadine up!” Casper shouted back.

Ignoring Casper’s snicker, Roman used his power to turn the faucet on, floating a sphere of water over to a kettle that already sat on the stove. A conical shape formed at the bottom of the sphere as the water swirled into the kettle.

As Roman waited for the water to boil, he stared out the window that sat just behind their sink, offering a side view of the rooftop of the building next door, and beyond that, the sea. There were a few sailboats out, not a cloud in the sky.

The kettle started whistling, and Roman saw to a much needed post-nap cup of tea.

He caught a reflection of himself in a small mirror in the kitchen, one that allowed Nadine to see what was behind her.

They could never be too careful.

His hair was white again, the tips black.

It had looked a bit odd once it had grown out a few inches, but now that his hair was cut short and just a centimeter or so of most of the strands were black, he looked almost scholarly.

A knock at the door startled Roman.

He set his cup of tea down on the wooden countertop and moved to the entrance of their three-bedroom flat.

Before opening the door, he extended his consciousness through its wooden surface, noticing nothing on the other side.

Suspicious, Roman opened the door with his power, putting his back against the wall just in case something swooped in.

Instead, he was greeted by a shriek, Roman recognizing it as the voice of a young girl.

“Is Eli free?” the girl asked.

“Where were you just now?”

“Here,” she said, looking around curiously. The girl was tan with blond hair, Roman not remembering if she was Eli’s friend Kay or his friend Holly.

The girl’s form started to lighten until she was semi-transparent.

“You’re an exemplar?” he asked her.

She looked down at her hand and yelped. “Sorry! I… I can’t control it.”

“It’s fine,” Roman told her.

“It’s so embarrassing. I don’t even notice it.”

“You’re young; you’ll get control of it soon enough. Eli!” Roman called over his shoulder. The scrawny boy came running, Casper now tucked in his pocket.

“Hi, Casper!” the girl shouted.

“Kay, where the heck have you been?” Casper asked. “We’ve been playing hide-and-go-seek with two people, and one of those people isn’t a person, if you know what I mean. Get in here!”

“So he’s free?” Kay asked Roman, trying to hide her anticipation by shaking her hands.

“Sure, but…” Roman’s eyes darted left and right. “How about you three play outside, maybe down by the shore? That would be nice. Eli, Nadine wants some seashells for a decoration she’s planning on our patio. Bring a basket down there and get some seashells with Kay.”

“I’m coming too!” Casper said, pointing her wooden sword at Roman.

“Of course you are. The basket is…” Roman used his power to open the closet door, locating a wicker basket with a scarf tied around its handle and a folded blanket in its center. The blanket lifted of its own accord to a shelf, the scarf joining it. “There.”

“Thanks!” Eli grabbed the basket and headed out the door in his bare feet, Kay barely able to keep up once he got going, her form wavering a bit.

Once they were gone, Roman returned to the kitchen to fetch his cup of tea.

He stood at the small kitchen island, looking back out over the neighbor’s rooftop to a flower arrangement the woman next door had been working on. It always fell over at night, Roman using his ability to right it almost every morning, much to Nadine’s delight, who thought it was a cute gesture.

Once again, he gazed out over the water, feeling a wave of contentment that made him momentarily forget his apprehension.

Roman was just about to go check on Nadine when there was another knock at the door, the knock he’d been waiting for.

He placed his cup of tea down and once again caught his own reflection in the mirror in their kitchen.

Roman nodded to himself and headed to the door, where he waited a moment before merging his power into the wood to see what was on the other side.

At first, he thought it was young Kay going invisible again, but then Roman noticed something that sent a small tremor down his spine.

The door swinging open, Roman looked down to see not one, but two identical caskets made of wood, the anonymous teleporter who had delivered them already gone.

His throat going dry, Roman melted the wood top away from the first casket, revealing a doll with her dark hair in pigtails, her face concealed by a mask. She wore a black dress with white fringe and eggshell tights, a pair of ballet flats on her feet.

He gave life to her immediately as he turned to the next casket, this time revealing a doll with sweeping red hair and purple eyes who wore a tight black exemplar uniform that pressed her breasts up as if she were wearing a corset.

A sliver of his power leaving him, Roman animated this doll as well, watching as she slowly woke with a soft smile on her face.

“Celia?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Coma?”

The other doll sat up, turning to Roman and gazing fondly at him with her big red eyes. “Hi.”

“Welcome home,” he finally said.

“Do you want some tea?” Celia asked as he helped her out of the casket.

“I’m fine. I’ve already made some.”

The end.

Back of the Book Content

The final installment of House of Dolls comes to a close and your reviews are needed.

If you’ve made it this far in the series, please be sure to review the first book.

I’ll wait. Hell, you may even want to go on a review marathon, which I welcome and encourage:

House of Dolls 1 - https://geni.us/HouseofDolls

House of Dolls 2 - https://geni.us/HouseofDolls2

House of Dolls 3 - https://geni.us/HouseofDolls3

House of Dolls 4 - https://geni.us/HouseofDolls4

The reason I ask is because the first book is generally how people gauge whether they’ll get into the series or not. Of course, review this book as well, as that is monstrously helpful.

You may have missed it, but I released a prequel to the House of Dolls series that stars Margo, Orange and a few other familiar faces (no spoilers). The House of Dolls prequel is called Child of Chaos.

Child of Chaos takes place ten years before House of Dolls, during the Western Plague (vampire epidemic) in the Western Province. It is available in print, ebook and audiobook:

https://geni.us/ChildofChaos

I encourage you to read Child of Chaos.

Finally, I do have something in the works that is in the same dark vein of House of Dolls. It is called Pilgrim, and it will be released starting in July 2020. Think of it as a John Wick Wuxia trilogy heavy on darkness, action, vengeance and killer scenes.

I haven’t told anyone about it aside from my Patreon fans, but since you’ve read all the way to House of Dolls 5, I’ll show you the cover here, no font yet...

Be sure to look for that. Come July 2020, I’ll need your reads, reviews once again because this one should strike that House of Dolls itch.

Thanks for the love and support and reviews. I couldn’t do this, or write books about a guy animating sex dolls without you.

Yours in sanity,

Harmon Cooper
www.harmoncooper.com

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Other Books by Harmon Cooper

I have written over fifty books. Here are some of the highlights!

A man becomes the grim reaper and introduces game mechanics to the role. DO NOT miss this book.

https://geni.us/DeathsMantle

My first cultivation novel about a monk, a bird and a drifter from Massachusetts karmically fighting their way through a world based on Bhutanese, Mongolian, and Tibetan landscapes and literature.

https://geni.us/Way-of-the-Immortals

My best-selling Superhero Harem Adventure about a sci-fi writer and the superpowered women who are trying to kill him. Fun content, adult read!

https://geni.us/CherryBlossomGirls1

A fantasy harem adventure inspired by Pokemon Go!, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and the Persona family of video games. Check out this Amazon best seller!

https://geni.us/MonsterHuntNYC

What if Ready Player One was a multi-part epic? Gritty LitRPG action, gamer humor, fantastic fantasy worlds, and a killer MC.

(This one is related to Monster Hunt NYC)

https://geni.us/TheLoop

If you love dark fantasy, RPGs, Witcher, Punisher, or Mad Max, you'll love this powerful gamer trilogy about a man and his wolf companion.

https://geni.us/LastWarrior

Tokyo, Japan meets online fantasy gaming and South Park-styled humor. Yakuza, goblins, action, intrigue - add this book to your inventory list!

(This one is related to Monster Hunt NYC)

https://geni.us/FICK

Table of Contents

- Recap
- Prologue: Progress Report
- Chapter One: Dinner Date
- Chapter Two: Fiery
- Chapter Three: Glass Houses
- Chapter Four: Fall from Grace
- Chapter Five: To the East
- Chapter Six: Diner and Dinner
- Chapter Seven: Telepathic Scenes
- Chapter Eight: Rebels without a Cause
- Chapter Nine: Quick Bite
- Chapter Ten: Ramping up Production
- Chapter Eleven: Trolley
- Chapter Twelve: Change of Plans
- Chapter Thirteen: Trespassers
- Chapter Fourteen: One Last Visit
- Chapter Fifteen: A Leaf in the Wind
- Chapter Sixteen: Smock Masks
- Chapter Seventeen: Prison Yard Fight
- Chapter Eighteen: Emboldened and Scolded
- Chapter Nineteen: Tending the Garden
- Chapter Twenty: Apple Pastries
- Chapter Twenty-One: Shower Tryst
- Chapter Twenty-Two: Holes in the Walls
- Chapter Twenty-Three: Coordinated Attack
- Chapter Twenty-Four: Last Mission
- Chapter Twenty-Five: Staying Alive
- Chapter Twenty-Six: Rebel Room Service

- Chapter Twenty-Seven: Exemplars and Wrist Guards

- Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Call
- Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Snowball’s Chance
- Chapter Thirty: Buried
- Chapter Thirty-One: Passports
- Epilogue
- Back of the Book Content