House of Dolls 5

by Harmon Cooper

  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 realisti
c,” 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.”