House of Dolls 5

by Harmon Cooper

  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 t
hat 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.”