House of Dolls 5

by Harmon Cooper

  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 an
ything 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.
r />   “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.”