House of Dolls 5

by Harmon Cooper

  “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.”