House of Dolls 5

by Harmon Cooper

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 th
ere 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.